The life of Martin Luther

MARTIN LUTHER.

THE LIFE

OF

MARTIN LUTH

ER

CompiUfc from Jltliablt

REV. WILLIAM STANQ,

/<: ^

ELEVENTH EDITION.!

FR. PUSTET,
PRINTER TO THE HOLY SEE AND S. CONGREGATIOV OF RITES

FR. PUSTET & CO.

NEW YORK.

CINCINNATI.

Copyright, 1883,

BY KRWIN STEINBA( K
O/ the Firm of Fr. Pustet &* Co

PREFACE.

Tx May last, Emperor William, head of the Protestant
-*- Church of Prussia, issued a decree proclaiming a special
observance of the loth and nth days of next November, to
honor the 4OOth anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther.
The occasion, we may presume, will call forth from Protestant
pulpits the usual invectives against medieval ignorance and
darkness, papal tyranny and the errors of the Roman Church.
Luther meanwhile will be shown up wreathed in a halo of
glory and sanctity, a Reformer of Christ's Church, an apostle
of liberty, an enlightener of the people, the destroyer of the
payacy, etc. Four hundred long years, indeed, since the birth
of a man who aimed such heavy blows at the papacy, who
wrote : ' 'Living, O pope, I was thy pest, and dying I shall
be thy death ;" and the Catholic Church is living still ; un
changed save that she is stronger and more united than in
Luther's time, while his doctrinal opinions have been so
blown about by every wind of change that, were he to come
back, on his anniversary, he could scarcely look with a fatherly
eye on modern Protestantism.

iv PREFACE.

Christ, the eternal truth, solemnly declared to St. Peter :
"Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church ;
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matth.
XVI, 1 8). Luther laughed at the fulfilment of this divine
promise and often prophesied the downfall of the papacy.
"God is not as man that He should lie, nor as the son of
man that He should be changed. Hath He said then, and
will He not do ? hath He spoken and will He not fulfil ? "
(Num. XXIII, 19.)

"To say that the Church can fail," Cardinal Newman
truly remarks, "or the See of St. Peter can fail, is to deny
the faithfulness of Almighty God to His word. "

The Catholic Church was in the world more than 1400 years
when Luther was born ; she had been living since the day,
when Christ said to His Apostles and to their successors :
' ' Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation
of the world." (Matth. XXVIII, 20.) And now, 400 years
after Luther's birth, have the words of Christ failed ? Has
the pope ceased to govern, according to the prediction of
Martin Luther? "Why, " the same learned Cardinal New
man exclaims, "there never has been a time, since the first
age of the Church, when there has been such a succession of
holy popes, as since the Reformation. Protestantism has
been a great infliction on such as have succumbed to it ; but
it has even wrought benefits for those whom it has failed to
seduce. "

PREFACE. v

The so-called reformation inflicted a wound upon the
Church, but this wound, as Mohler well observes, "served for
the discharge of impurities which wicked men had introduced
into the body of the Church — a thought full of comfort where
there are so many painful reflections. "

The following historical sketch is intended to show whether
Martin Luther was that great hero and saintly reformer of
whom we read such wonderful tales in anti-catholic text-books
and encyclopaedias ; whether by his life and his works he
was qualified to be "a prophet amongst a fallen people." We
simple lay facts before the reader, facts taken mainly from
Luther's numerous writings and gleaned from the Church
Histories of Dr. Alzog and Cardinal Hergenrother, and
especially from the learned and classical work of Johannes
Janssen.

An impartial Protestant critic says of Professor Janssen's
" History of the German People ": " Here again is a prodigy
of catholicity : as Dr. Mohler's Symbolism stirred up high
waves in the dead sea of German learning, so this book, and
in a greater degree, causes the highest excitement in all circles.
Profound erudition, a far-reaching view over several scientific
branches, a rich and varied originality, an extraordinary talent
for skilful transitions, a vigorous style. No polemics in this
book. Its fundamental tone is strongly religious and
patriotic. "

Facts cannot be argued away. They may be denied ; yet

VI PREFACE.

they remain inexorable and sometimes even seem, as Mon
taigne says, impudent to those who are anxious to make away
with them forever.

' ' Toiius injustitiae nulla capiialior est, quam eorum, qui
cum maxirne fallunt id agunt ut viri boni esse videantur" —
' ' No injustice is greater than that of those who when they
practice the worst deception, act in such a manner as to appear
good men." These words of the great Roman may partly
serve to explain, how that man's memory is honored who
brought unspeakable woe and misery upon his country, and
whose personal character was far from being praiseworthy.

PROVIDENCE, R. I.,
Feast of the Assumption, 1883.

MARTIN LUTHER was born at Eisleben, on the
tenth day of November, in the year 1483 or
1484, — it is uncertain which. His father, Hans
Luther, had a farm in Mohra which he cultivated ;
but before Martin's birth he had to leave this and
flee for his life, because in a violent passion he had
killed a peasant.1

The years of Martin's childhood were hard and
cheerless, not only because he shared the extreme
poverty of his parents, but also on account of the
immoderate severity with which he was treated at
home and in school. As examples of the harsh
treatment to which he was subjected, he tells us that
on one occasion his mother flogged him cruelly on
account of a worthless little nut, and that at another
time he was punished so mercilessly by his father
that he determined to run away from home ; at
school, too, he received in one forenoon fifteen
blows. But in spite of all this flogging and trembling
he learned, as he confesses,2 merely nothing. This
treatment rather produced in him a timid dispo
sition, and suppressed the cheerful obedience which
he might otherwise have acquired ; it could intim
idate the violence of his character, but could not
remove it.

i K. Luther, Geschichtliche Notizen. Wittenberg 1867.
• JUrgens, Luther's Leben. ' ^eipzig 1846. I, 151—160.

2 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

At the age of fourteen, Martin went to Magdeburg
and in the following year he set out for Eisenach to
attend the Latin school. He was so poor that he
was obliged to support himself by singing in the
street. During this part of his life, the solemn cere
monies of the Church, the religious dramas and
especially the German sacred hymns, which were
wont to be sung during divine service by the entire
congregation, had a soothing influence upon him.

In his seventeenth year, while he was yet study
ing at Eisenach, his circumstances changed for the
better. Frau Cotta, a lady of nobility, took him
under her protection, and in her house he caught
his first glimpses of the sunnier side of life.

He entered the university of Erfurt in 1501, and im
mediately began to study philosophy and law. In
1502, he received the degree* of Bachelor of Philo-
sophyand three years later, that of Magister. For a
short time after this, he lectured on natural philosophy
at the university. During these years, his favorite
authors were the pagan classics. He read Cicero,
Livy, Virgil and Plautus, and attended the humani
stic lectures of Jerome Emser. He regarded the
classical authors as the masters and trainers of his
mind, and became intimately acquainted with several
eminent humanists of the time. Nevertheless he
himself was better known among his friends as a
musician and philosopher than as a classical scholar.
He enjoyed at this time the pleasures of social life ;
he took part in boar-hunting and other knightly
amusements ; but his disposition, which had lately
grown somewhat joyous, would often give way sud
denly to a gloomy, morbid humour and to scruples
of conscience.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 3

In 1505, Martin was deeply affected by the sudden
death of a friend. In the same year, while travelling
near Erfurt, he was overtaken by a thunder-storm
which brought his life into great danger. " When
I was surrounded," he wrote afterwards,1 " with
terror and the fear of death, I made a forced vow."
This, as he announced to his friends at a supper and
musical entertainment to which he had invited them,
was a promise to renounce the world and become an
Augustinian monk. " You see me to-day," he said,
"but henceforth no more." All the arguments which
his friends used to dissuade him from the course
he had chosen, were fruitless ; and on the night of
July i/th, 1505, they accompanied him weeping to
the gate of the monastery. It is worthy of notice
here that the only books which Luther brought with
him to the monastery, were the poets Virgil and
Plautus. "How many," said the Dominican prior,
Peter Schwarz, " learn poetry ; and how few the
Gospels ! How many study law ; and how few the
Sacred Scripture ! " Luther, it appears, was one of
the 'many' ; he might have had a happier career if
he belonged to the ' few.'

It is an established fact that the study of the
Bible flourished during the fifteenth century in a
great majority of the colleges and universities. The
schools which Luther attended, must have been very
exceptional, for he writes : " I was twenty years
old, and had not yet seen a bible."3

* De Wette, Luther's Brief >, etc., Berlin 1825-1828. Vol. IT, p. 101.
2 Luther's Sammtliche Werke. Erlangen 1826-1868; Frankfurt 1862-
1870. — See vol. 60, p. 255.

II.

" I entered the convent and left the world," he
says, " because I despaired of myself." 1 Hans Luther
distrusted his son's vocation and wished to see him
take a high position in the world. He, therefore,
decidedly opposed the course which Martin was now
pursuing ; but in spite of this opposition, Luther
made his solemn vows, in 1507, to persevere until
death in poverty, chastity and obedience according
to the rule of St. Augustine. Shortly afterwards he
was ordained a priest. He was so greatly agitated
while saying his first mass, that he would have
stopped at the Canon and come down from the
altar, had not the prior hindered him.2 Evidently
he was led to the monastery by a sudden, violent
resolution which sprang from a morbid discord in
his character, and not by a true vocation. His
father said to him after ordination : " Contrary to
the fourth commandment, you have left me and your
mother in our old age, when we expected help and
consolation from you after expending so much upon
your education."3

Luther now sought to obtain the gift of peace, as
a monk ; but he used means which only made his

1 Jtlrgens I, 522.

2 Alzog's Church History, vol. Ill, p. 10.

8 Ratzenberger, Hands chriftliche Geschichte, etc.) Jena 1850. See

P. 48.

4

T>R. MARTIN LUTHER. $

condition worse. Nourished by the solitude of
monastery life, his scrupulousness assumed a very
dismal form. He lacked simple obedience to the
rules of his order. He was morally bound to recite
the divine office daily ; but sometimes, yielding to
a passionate inclination for study, he would not touch
his Breviary for weeks at a time. Then he would
try to atone for his neglect by locking himself up in.
a cell and fasting. One day he chastised him
self so severely that he missed sleep for five weeks,
and narrowly escaped from falling into a mental
disorder.1

He thought the mortifications which the rule of
his order prescribed, were not enough for him. " I
proposed special tasks to myself," he writes, " and
had my own ways. My superiors fought against
this singularity, and they did so rightly. I was an
infamous persecutor and murderer of my own life
because I fasted, prayed, watched and tried myself
beyond my powers, which was nothing but sui
cide."2 To him applied well the old monastic
proverb : " Everything beyond obedience looks
suspicious in a monk."

Like all those given to scrupulousness, he saw in
himself nothing but sin, and in God nothing but
anger and revenge. His contrition was lacking in
humble love and filial hope in God's mercy through
the merits of Jesus Christ. He felt himself in con
tinual fear and trembling before God, and he wished
to appease the divine wrath by his own justice and

1 Seckendorf, Commentarius historicus, etc., Francofurti 1692. Via?
vol. I, 2 it-
» JUrgens I, 577-585.

6 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

the power of works. " I am," he said, " a most pre
sumptuous justifier (praesumptuosissimus justitia-
rius), who trust not in God's justice, but in my
own." As a consequence of this folly, he became sub
ject to fits of melancholy and discouragement, so
that he even hated God and wished that he had
never been born. " I had a false confidence in my
own righteousness, and in my heart an eternal dis
trust and despair, hatred and blasphemy against
God. I became such an enemy to Christ that when
ever I saw his picture or likeness, as he hung upon
the cross, I was terrified and closed my eyes, and
would rather have seen the devil." l Afterwards,
strange to say, he believed that this sad condition
of his soul resulted from the doctrine of the Church
on good works ; whereas in reality he was always in
perfect contradiction to this part of the Church's
doctrine. His tortured conscience found but little
relief in the tribunal of penance. He made a general
confession in Erfurt ; and in 1 5 10, when sent to Rome
to transact some business for his order, he tried to
ease his soul by another general confession.

When Luther saw the Eternal City for the first
time, he fell upon his knees and exclaimed: " Hail !
Rome, holy city, thrice sanctified by the blood of
the martyrs!"2 He paid visits to the shrines and
sanctuaries with great fervor and devotion, and in
his oddness he "almost regretted that his parents
were not already dead so that he might release their
souls from purgatory by saying masses, reciting
prayers and doing good works. " So great was his

i Ibidem.

a Luther's Wcrke. Halle, XXII, 2574.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. J

veneration and enthusiasm for the Holy Pontiff, that
he said: "I was ready to slay, if I could, all those
who should even by one syllable contradict the
pope."1

On his return to Germany, he was declared Licen
tiate of Theology. This happened on October i8th,
1512, and on the following day he was endowed with
the Doctorate. "I was obliged," he says, "to take
the degree of Doctor and to promise under oath
that I would preach the Holy Scriptures, which are
very dear to me, faithfully and without adulteration/
At this time he took up the studies of Greek and
Hebrew, in order to fit himself for teaching the
Bible. He then began his lectures on the Psalms
and on the Epistles of St. Paul at the university of
Wittenberg. He also lectured on St. Augustine, to
whose works his attention had been directed by his
Provincial, Dr. Staupitz; and he preached regularly
in the Augustinian church. " Even at this early
age, " says Dr. Alzog, "he had already embraced, in
a confused way, the doctrine that good works are
wholly worthless and that faith alone is all-sufficient
for salvation."

i Sdmnttliche Werkct 40, 284.

III.

THE decided turn in the development of Luther's
teaching seems to have taken place during the
years 1513 and 1514. In 1515, as Matthesius testi
fies, he was already called a heretic. 1 So convinced
was he of his doctrine on justification, that in a
letter to George Spenlein, the Augustinian, dated
April 7th, 1516, he writes: "Accursed is he who
does not believe this."2 He called this doctrine
the "Confession of St. Augustine." It soon ruled
the university of Wittenberg and on the 3 1st of
October, 1517, it began to spread throughout Ger
many.

On this memorable day, Luther fixed upon the
doors of Wittenberg copies of ninety-five theses for
a disputation on the efficacy of indulgences. He
found occasion for this proceeding in the sermons of
John Tetzel, a Dominican friar and a powerful pop
ular preacher, who had been chosen by Albert,
Archbishop of Mentz and Prince Elector, to publish
in the north of Germany the indulgence which
Leo X. had just granted to the Catholic world. The
proceeds of this indulgence were to be devoted to
the building of St. Peter's Basilica at Rome. Tetzel
preached before large crowds of people. In his in
structions to pastors and confessors he required the

1 Matthesius, Historien, etc. Ntirnberg 1570. See Hist. 9.
» DC Wette i, 18.

8

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 9

necessary conditions prescribed by the Church for
the gaining of indulgences, the receiving of the
Sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion. The
preachers of the indulgence were required to lead a
good life and to avoid taverns, suspicious intercourse
and all unnecessary expense. Nevertheless, the en
forcements of the Holy See were sometimes ne
glected; and it is a sad truth that the personal
appearance of some preachers together with the
manner in which they offered and praised the indul
gence, was the cause of great scandal.

It was not, however, these abuses that made
Luther raise his voice against indulgences. It was
the doctrine itself, which the Church proclaims upon
this subject and which is directly opposed to Lu
ther's views on justification. In his Lenten sermons,
in 1517, he said : " Christ puts satisfaction into the
heart ; therefore, you need not go to Rome nor Je
rusalem nor St. James', nor wander about after an
indulgence." 1 Again, in a letter to Tetzel, he
wrote: " Do not be disturbed ; because the war was
not begun on your account, but the child has an
other father." 2 These passages indicate a deeper
reason for his attack upon indulgences than could be
found in the mere abuses.

Luther, however, in his propositions professes ad
herence to the Catholic doctrine on indulgences. In
his seventy-first thesis, he says: "Whosoever speaks
against the truth of papal indulgences, let him be
anathema." This open contradiction in his theses
can be explained only by the fact that he was at

1 SUmmtliche Werke, 21, 212.
» De Wette— Seidcmann 6, 18.

IO DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

that time completely ignorant about the nature and
effect of indulgences. He afterwards confessed as
much. "Upon my salvation," he said, " I knew no
more at that time what an indulgence was, than did
those who came to inquire of me." l

Towards the close of 1517, Tetzel took the degree
of Doctor of Theology at the university of Frankfort
on the Oder. On this occasion he answered Luther
by one hundred and six counter-theses, in which he
clearly and concisely defended the Church's doctrine
on indulgences. He said correctly: " Indulgences
do not forgive sin, but only the temporal punishment
due to sin, and this only when the sin has been sin
cerely repented of and confessed; indulgences do
not detract from the merits of Christ, but in place of
satisfactory punishment they put the satisfactory
passion of Christ." Dr. Hefele thinks that Tetzel
understood thoroughly the difficult doctrine on in
dulgences and that his propositions are decidedly
better than the famous obelisks of Dr. Eck. 2 Be
this as it may, there is no doubt but that the clear
mind of Tetzel saw plainly that the controversy
which Luther had aroused was not merely a quarrel
of the schools, but a deep and significant contest on
the Catholic principles of faith and authority. In
another refutation of Luther's new doctrine, given
in 1518, Tetzel said: " These articles lead to con
tempt for Pope and Church. Thus Christendom
would fall into great danger; everyone could believe
as he liked; one could interpret the scripture after
his own fashion." 3

i Luth. Op. VII., 462.

a Tilbinger Quartalsckrift, 1854, p. 631.

» Grtoe, T«ttel and Luther. Soest und Olpe 1853. 8e« pp. 103-109.

DR. MAR TIN L UTHER. 1 1

The Emperor Maximilian also recognized the full
importance of the controversy. In a letter to the
Pope, dated Aug. 5th, 1518, he declared that Lu
ther's innovations, if they were not suppressed, would
endanger the unity of faith and would replace re
vealed truth with private opinion. l

During all this time Luther imagined his cause the
cause of God, and proposed his views and opinions as
truths already granted. He even pretended to have
his doctrine directly from God and desired that the
whole Church should be converted to his new gospel
" on justification by faith alone, without good
works; " he would submit to Pope and Church only
after such a conversion. In his mad presumption
he even went so far as to declare : " I wish to have
my doctrine judged by nobody — not even by angels.
He who does not receive my teaching, may not be
saved." 2 And yet at this time he had not formally
separated himself from the Church; he even seemed
to abhor such a course: "I never approved of a
schism, nor will I approve of it for all eternity." In
February, 1519, he wrote: " No cause is so great or
could become so great that one should separate
himself from the Roman Church; nay, for no sin or
evil whatsoever that one might name or think of.
should one divide charity or spiritual unity."3

One of the reformer's ablest adversaries was John
Eck, Doctor of Theology and Vice-Chancellor of
Ingolstadt University, whom Luther himself ack
nowledged a man of learning and genius. Possessing

1 Lutheri opera laiina. Francofurti 1865 — 1868. See 2, 349-350.

2 S'dmmtliche Werke, 2%, 144.
8 S&mmtlichc Werkc, 24, 8,

12 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

a broad and acute intellect, which he had endowed
with vast stores of philosophical and theological
learning, and gifted with a wonderful memory, he
was in every respect superior to Luther. Dr. Eck, in
a little pamphlet, set forth the doctrine of the Church
in a very learned but admirably classical style.
Luther answered this in a manner so entirely illogi
cal and abusive that it was beneath his dignity
either as doctor of divinity or professor at an uni
versity.

At about this time Luther sent his theses and
their defense to Pope Leo X, and in a letter to
that pontiff feigned entire submission to the Holy
See and the commands of his superiors. "Most Holy
Father," he wrote, "I cast myself at thy feet with all
that I have and am. Give life or take it ;- call, re
call ; approve, reprove ; your voice is that of Christ,
who presides and speaks in you."1 The insincerity
of these words can be explained only by the un~
common duplicity of Luther's character.

1 See the Latin Document in Audin's Life of Luther, vol. I.

IV.

ON the 9th of Nov., 1518, Leo X issued his bull,
"Cum postquam", in which he gave a full explana-
nation of the Catholic doctrine upon indulgences, in
order, as he said, "that no one might have a pretext
for pleading ignorance of the Roman Church's true
teaching on indulgences." Some months before this
he had sent Cardinal Cajetan as a legate to Augs
burg to give Luther a hearing and to call him back
from his errors. Luther was summoned to Augsburg,
and a convention took place in October 1518. Caje
tan received him with the greatest kindness and ex
horted him to renounce his errors and to return like
a repenting son to his mother the Church. But the
kind offers of the Cardinal were rejected. Luther
departed from Augsburg in secresy, leaving behind
him an appeal from the pope ill-informed to the
pope better-instructed.

As the religious quarrels grew more serious and
dangerous every day, a second legate was sent to
Germany. This was the pope's chamberlain, Charles
Miltitz, a Saxon nobleman. He met Luther at
Altenburg in January, 1519, and soon won the lat-
ter's confidence by his tenderness and kindness. Lu
ther promised to keep silent if his adversaries would
do the same. He even wrote a letter to the pope on
March 3rd, 1519, in which he said : "I have been un
necessarily, excessively and abusively severe in my

13

14 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

treatment of those empty babblers. I had only one
end in view, viz.: to prevent our mother, the Roman
Church, from being soiled by the filth of another's
avarice and the faithful from being led into error
and taught to place indulgences before charity. Now,
Most Holy Father, I protest before God and his
creatures that it has never been my purpose, nor is
it now, to do aught that might tend to weaken or
overthrow the authority of the Roman Church or
that of Your Holiness ; nay, more, I confess that the
power of this Church is above all things ; that no
thing in heaven or on earth is to be set before it,
Jesus, the Lord of all, alone excepted." 1 On the
I2th of the same month and year, the detestable hy
pocrite wrote to his friend Spalatinus : "I whisper to
you, in sooth, I know not whether the Pope is Anti
christ or his apostle." 2

A few months after this, Dr. Eck was forced into a
disputation at Leipzig with Andrew Carlstadt, the
friend and colleague of Luther who had placed the
Doctor's cap upon his head. Ernest Adolphus,
Bishop of Merseburg, had expressly forbidden this
disputation ; but nevertheless it was opened on June
24th, 1 5 19, in the hall of Pleissenburg Castle. It was
attended by George, Duke of Saxony, and a learned
audience. On one side stood Luther and Carlstadt
together with the professors of Wittenberg ; on the
other was Dr. Eck with the professors of Cologne,
Louvain and Leipzig.

Carlstadt, who spoke first, asserted, like Luther,
that man since the fall of our first parents had not

1 Latin Document in Audin's Life of Luther, vol. I, p. 469.

2 De Wette I, 239.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 1 5

possessed any liberty whatever and that his works,
whether good or bad, were always offensive to God.
Dr. Eck then replied. He showed amid the cheer
ing of the whole assembly that such a doctrine was
absurd and offended not only God, but his creatures.

"Carlstadt and Eck", says the historian Menzel,
" disputed upon free will ; Carlstadt, like Luther,
denied human liberty, — an opinion as false as it is
repugnant to common sense. After he had been
defeated by Eck, who was superior to him in elo
quence and had good sense and authority on his side,
the controversy was resumed." Next came the ques
tion of the papal primacy. Luther, having witnessed
the humiliating defeat of Carlstadt, took the dispu
tation up himself. Dr. Eck deduced the divine origin
of the papacy from the words of Christ : " Thou art
Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church."
Luther, in his reply, rejected the scriptural interpre
tations of the Fathers, the decrees of the Council of
Constance, the infallibility of the Ecumenical Coun
cils and the primacy of the pope. When reproached
for defending condemned Hussite propositions, he
grew angry and violent, shouting confusedly in Ger
man and Latin. Everyone could see that he was no
longer a Catholic. Duke George, astonished and
provoked at the bold heretical assertions of the
monk, exclaimed in an angry voice : " Indeed this
is dangerous", (Das wait die Sucht).

On July I4th, Carlstadt resumed the disputation
on free will. Though he defended several untenable
theses, he showed more skill than during his first
defense. Luther, however, did not await the end of
the controversy, but left Leipzig suddenly. He was

16 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

as much dissatisfied with his reception in the city
and the honors shown to his adversaries as with
the unexpected result of the disputation. The min
utes of the discussion were submitted to the univer
sities which had been elected umpires.

The disputation had the good effect of strengthen
ing in the Catholic faith, Duke George and the city
and university of Leipzig and of making more clear
and decided the positions of the parties engaged in
it. The decisions rendered by the arbitrating uni
versities of Cologne, on Aug. 3Oth, and of Louvain on
Nov. 5th, 1519, condemned the teaching of Luther
as heretical. The reformer had shortly before en
titled these judges his masters of theology ; he now
called them mules and asses, — Epicurean swine.

In October, 1520, he sent his Treatise on Christian
Liberty to Leo X, through Miltitz. He also sent a
letter in which he poured forth all the venom of his
soul against Rome and the pope, showed the hatred
which he harboured for Cardinal Cajetan and Dr.
Eck, and gave the clearest proofs of his indomitable
pride. He advised the Holy Father to descend from
his throne and content himself with a poor curacy.
Most legates would have refused to carry such an
insolent libel ; but the good - natured Miltitz
accepted it.

" You, Leo," Luther says in his letter, " are like a
lamb in the midst of wolves, — like Daniel among the
lions. The See of Rome is unworthy of you ; it
should be accepted by Satan, who, in truth, reigns
more in that Babylon than you do. It would be a
blessing for you to lay down the office of the Papacy,
which only your most depraved enemies can exult-

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. I/

ingly represent as an honor, and live upon the trifling
income of a priest or upon your hereditary fortune.
Only your children of perdition, like Judas Iscariot
and his imitators, should revel in the honors of which
you are the object." * Roscoe calls this letter "a
deadly satire on the Church of Rome."

Dr. Eck, about this time, endeavored to convince
the Prince Elector of the multitude and gravity of
Luther's errors. Failing in this, he set out for Rome
in January, 1520, to inform the Apostolic See of the
condition of religious affairs in Germany, and to
effect, if possible, a speedy decision. Luther, anti
cipating excommunication and a condemnation of
his errors, cunningly sought to deprive the papal
decrees of their terror in the eyes of the people, by
a pamphlet on excommunication which he pub
lished. While Rome was busy examining his works,
he wrote two new books in which he denied the
doctrine of the sacraments, the Holy Sacrifice of the
mass, solemn vows, the primacy of the pope, the
priesthood, etc., etc. These writings were titled :
"Address to the Christian German Nobility," "On
the Improvement of Christian Morality," " On the
Babylonish Captivity of the Church," and " On Chri
stian Liberty."

Luther's system had now dwindled down to a
religious pantheistical mysticism, the result of his
youthful stubborness and pride together with his
religious eccentricities. According to his teaching,
the Bible is the only source of faith ; and he inter
preted and twisted the language of this holy book
after his own fashion, paying no attention whatever

De Wette I, 497.

1 8 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

to rectitude or fitness, and regarding only utility.
Sometimes he even changed the words of Scripture.
When charged at one time with having added the
word " only," to Verse 28, Rom. III., he humbly
replied in the polite and courteous manner so pe
culiar to himself: " Should your Pope give himself
any useless annoyance about the word "sola," you
may promptly reply : ' It is the will of Dr. Martin
Luther that it should be so.' " He brightly remarks
upon another occasion : " Pope and jackass are
synonymous terms. We are the masters of the
papists, not their schoolboys and disciples ; and we
will not be dictated to by them." l And he once
said to Spalatinus : ' Do you know what I think of
Rome ? It is a confused collection of fools, nin
nies, simpletons, blockheads, demoniacs and dev
ils." 2

1 Altona ed., T. V., fol. 2690.

2 De Wette I, 453.

V.

" FAITH alone," Luther teaches, " works justifica
tion ; and a man is saved, and his sins are forgiven
by confidently believing." Later on, he wrote to
Melanchthon : " Be a sinner and sin boldly ; but
more boldly still believe and rejoice in Christ, who
is the conqueror of sin, death and the world. Sin is
our lot here below. This life is not the abode of
justice ; but * we expect,' says Peter, ' a new heaven
and a new earth wherein dwells justice.' It is suf
ficient that by the riches of God's glory we acknow
ledge the Lamb who takes away the sins of the
world ; sin cannot deprive us of him, even if in the
same day we were to commit a thousand adulteries
or a thousand murders." l In one of his sermons he
exclaimed : " Provided one has faith, adultery is
no sin ! " 2 Such a doctrine was without doubt very
welcome to libertines and robber-knights ; and we
are not at all surprised to find the monk of Witten
berg soon a boon companion of Ulrich von Hutten,
Francis of Sickingen and other monsters of immoral
ity.

In his writings Luther continued to heap impreca
tion and invective upon Rome. 3 " It would be no
wonder," he said, " if God should rain down from

1 De Wette 2, 37.

2 Alzog III, 28.

3 Sammtliche Werke^ 21, 274 seq.

19

20 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

heaven sulphur and hellish fire upon Rome and
plunge it into the abyss, as he did with Sodom and
Gomorrha." He preaches an open war against the
Eternal City: " If this rage of the Romanists con
tinue, no other remedy appears to me than that
emperor, kings and princes should arm themselves
and attack this pest of the earth, and decide its
affairs no longer with words, but with iron. If we
punish thieves by the rope, murderers by the sword
and heretics by fire, why do we not attack these
teachers of perdition, these cardinals, these popes
and the whole swarm of the Roman Sodom that
unceasingly corrupt God's Church, and why do we
not wash our hands in their blood ? " l

These eruptions of unbridled passion seem very
characteristic of Luther when we notice several of
the expressions which he uses in speaking to his
intimate friends. On Aug. i8th, 1520, for examplej
he wrote to John Lange: " We are convinced here
that the Papacy is the seat of the true and real
Antichrist, and we believe that, for the salvation of
souls, everything is lawful, in order to deceive and
ruin it." 2 In another letter he appears to confess
that he has lost all control over himself: " Compos
mei non sum ; raptor nescio quo spiritu"*

Some of the ablest theologians of the world were
engaged at Rome for several months in extracting
the most important errors from Luther's writings.
Among these Papal consultors were Petrus de As-
coltis, Cajetan, Sadoletus, Jacovacci, Aegidius of

1 Opera latina, 2, 79-108.

2 De Wette, i, 478.
s De Wette I, 555.

DR. MAR TIN L UTHER. 2 1

Viterbo, etc. But only after long and mature de
liberation did the gentle and learned Leo X. open
his lips, and speak as the successor of St. Peter. On
June 1 5th, 1520, he issued his admirable Bull " Ex-
surge > Domine" in which he condemned the errors of
Luther's doctrine, ordered his works to be burned,
and declared their author excommunicated unless he
should retract at the expiration of sixty days.

The Bull itself was written in a tone rather of
paternal affliction than of just severity. " Imitating
the clemency of the Almighty," Leo says, " who
wills not the death of a sinner, but that he should be
converted and live, we shall forget all injuries done
to us and to the Apostolic See, and we shall do all
we can to make him give up his errors. By the
depth of God's mercy and the blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ, shed for the redemption of man and
the foundation of the Church, we exhort and pray
Luther and his followers to cease disturbing the
peace, the unity and the power of the Church."

Thus speaks the generous heart of the Medicean
pope, who apparently suffers while he is compelled
to chastise a rebellious child. He is still the same
man that he was when Erasmus described him as
Cardinal de Medicis : "I shall never forget the grace,
the beauty, the elegance of manners which struck
me on my first interview with the cardinal ; his noble
and dignified countenance, the courtesy with which
he received me, and the ineffable charm of his con •
versation. In him shone those qualities which Plato
requires in a prince, goodness of heart and learn-
ing." '

i Erasmi, lit. V, ep. 2.

22 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

The execution of the Bull, lExsurge\ was en
trusted to the papal legates, Aleandro, Carraccioli
and Eck. With regard to the followers of the new
doctrine, it was a sad mistake that Dr. Eck, who was
Luther's great adversary, should have been charged
with the publication and execution of the Bull in
several of the German dioceses. It was received in
Leipzig and Erfurt with sneers and insults, and Eck
had to fly from the students of Wittenberg.

But Luther himself paid little heed to the fact
that Eck had been chosen ; he had already actually
severed himself from the Church. On Nov. i/th, 1520,
he appealed from the Holy Pontiff as from "an unjust
judge — an obdurate, erring schismatic and heretic,
condemned as such by the Bible," to an Ecumenical
Council ; and he called upon the emperor and the
nobility to resist the unchristian conduct and out
rageous violence of the pope. "Whosoever shall
follow the pope, him do I, Martin Luther, deliver
to the divine judgment."1 "Never since the be
ginning of the world," he wrote on Nov. 4th to Spa-
latinus, "did Satan so shamefully speak against God
as in this Bull ; it is impossible that he can be saved
who adheres to it, or does not reje-ct it."2 In his
pamphlet "Against the Execrable Bull of Anti
christ" he says : "What mule, what ass, what mole,
what stock may not discharge the functions of
judge ? Has not your vile face blushed thus to dare,
with words of smoke, to oppose the thunders of the
Gospel ? 3

1 S&mmtKcbe Werkey 24, 34.

a De Wette i, 578.

3 Of era Lutheri, II, 89.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 23

But Luther was not satisfied with having vomited
forth in his writings insult and basest calumny
against the Apostolic See. On Dec. loth, 1520, he
assembled the students and other inhabitants of
Wittenberg at the Elster-Gate around a large pile
of wood. After this had been set fire to, the Body
of Canon Law together with the writings of Eck,
Emser and others was thrown into the flames. At
length Luther himself flung the Bull 'Exsurge into
the fire, exclaiming : "Thou hast disturbed the
Lord's Holy One ; therefore shaltthou be consumed
in fire eternal !" The emotions that filled his heart
upon this occasion, found full vent in his speech to
the students on the following day. " It is now full
time," he said, "that the pope himself were burned.
My meaning is that the Papal Chair, its false teach
ings and its abominations should be given to the
flames." l About the same time he wrote to Spa-
latinus : " I begin to believe that the papacy, thus
far unconquerable, can be destroyed and that its last
day is nigh." 2

i Op. Latina, V. 252—256.
a De Wette i, 533.

VI.

IN the meantime, Charles V, son of Philip the
Fair, had succeeded his grandfather, the generous
Maximilian. He was crowned Emperor of Germany
on October 22d, 1520, at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was
clearly Luther's interest to seek the favor of
the young emperor ; he, therefore, addressed a
letter to him, in which, among other things, he
said : *'I, poor and mendicant, cast myself at your
Royal Majesty's feet. For three years, I have been
the object of hatred, insults and dangers, In vain
have I cried for mercy ; in vain offered to be silent ;
in vain proposed terms of peace ; in vain demanded
to be informed. They seek to stifle me and the
Gospel. After all my endeavors nothing remains
to me but to invoke the aid of your Imperial Majesty
after the example of St. Athanasius. Dear Prince
of the kings of the earth, I embrace your knees ; may
Your Majesty condescend to take me, — or rather
the truth, for which alone you are armed with the
sword, — under your wings, and protect me only un
til I know whether I am vanquisher or vanquished.
If I am convicted of impiety or heresy, I have noth
ing more to ask from you."1

The new emperor was not v/ell instructed in the
German religious quarrels ; but, being well educated
in the Catholic faith and zealously devoted to it,

» Audin I, 471. (Latin Document.)

34

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 2$

he allowed the papal nuncios to burn Luther's
writings. He declined, however, to issue an edict
against him, and declared it his intention to
summon Luther before the diet of Worms, which
was to meet on January 28th, 1521. The papal
legate, Aleandro, protested against this proceeding ;
Lnther had already been judged and excommuni
cated by Rome, and it could no longer be a question
for a secular court when Rome had spoken. The
States, however, declined to yield to Aleandro's
demand, and the emperor sent a letter of safe con
duct to Luther, calling him to Worms. " You
have," said Charles in his letter, " neither violence
nor ambuscade to fear. We wish you to confide in
our word." No wonder that Luther so bravely
determined to go to Worms, even at the risk of his
life, and that he wrote so heroically to Spalatinus :
" I shall go to Worms, even if there were as many
devils there as there are tiles on the roofs of Witten
berg."1 In another letter, dated March 24th, 1521,
he says : " They labor for my recantation. Well !
I shall recant, and say : ' I have from the first
maintained that the pope was the vicar of Christ ;
I now retract, and say, the pope is the devil's
apostle.' " 2

In the meantime Luther continued to excite the
people against the head of the Church. In a sermon
which he delivered on the feast of the Epiphany,
1521, he compared the pope to Herod, " who with a
false heart dares to adore Christ and wishes to cut
his throat. The pope's regimen and Christ's king-

1 Seckendorf, 162.

2 De Wette I, 580.

26 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

dom are as much opposed to each other as water to
fire and devil to angel."1 In a German pamphlet,
published on March ist, he styles the pope "worse
than all devils because he condemns faith, which the
devil never did." "As I call the pope the greatest
murderer that the earth has borne since the begin
ning, who kills soul and body, I am, — praised be
God ! — an heretic in the eyes of His Holiness and the
papists." 2

On his way to Worms, Luther was warmly re
ceived by th~ people of Erfurt while passing through
that city. Crotus Rubianus, Rector of the Univer
sity, with forty members of that famous school,
greeted him at his entrance into the town. On the
following day, he preached in the Augustinian church,
and, as usual, thundered against pope and priests.
The people were so worked up by his sermon that,
on the day after his departure, they made a furious
attack upon the residence of the canons, destroying
books, images, furniture, etc. The canons them
selves escaped the mob's fury by flight. These were
the first fruits of the "New Gospel." In Rein-
hardsbrunn Luther exhorted the superior of the
monastery " to say an * Our Father ' for our Lord
Christ, that his father may be propitious to him;"
for Christ's and Luther's cause were one and the
same. 3

On April i6th, 1521, the reformer arrived in
Worms, and on the following day he appeared be
fore the Diet. He was asked by John von Eck,

1 Sdmmtliche Werke, 16, 39-40.

2 Sdnimtliche Werke, 24, 96 sq.

3 Ratzenberger 50,

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 27

Chancellor of the Archbishop of Treves, the double
question: whether he was the author of twenty
volumes placed upon a table near by, and whether he
was willing to retract the teachings contained in
them. To the first part of the question Luther an
swered affirmatively. For the other part he re
quested time to consider. Though such a request
was very silly, the mild and clement Charles V.
granted it. If Luther retracted, he would have to
renounce his popularity and the system that had
grown up with him; if he did not retract, he would
appear plainly as an obdurate heretic. He chose
the latter course, and, on the following day, being
encouraged by some of the German nobility, he re
fused to recant.

The emperor was not favorably impressed by the
vain monk's rough and sensuous figure. He said :
" This man will never make me a heretic." 1 On
April ipth, he sent a paper to the States, written in
French and English with his own hand. " After the
example of our forefathers," he said, in this paper,
" we will cling strongly and faithfully to the Chri
stian faith and the Roman Church, and believe rather
the holy fathers, assembled in general councils, than
this one friar. I repent of having waited so long,
instead of having proceeded against him earnestly.
Luther shall withdraw from this hour. I shall keep
the word I have given, and the free safe-conduct.
Take care that he returns safely to whence he came.
But I forbid him to preach his pernicious doctrine to
the people and thus to excite disorders."2

1 HergenrSther : Kirchengeschlchte, II, 256.

8 FOrstemann's Urkundenbuch. Hamburg 1842. Vol. I, p. 25.

28 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

Several princes obtained from Charles V. a delay
of a few days. During this time John von Eck,
Cochlaeus and Archbishop Greifenklau tried vainly
in private conferences to reclaim the rebellious
monk. Luther, like Pelagius and Arius of old, and,
in fact, every other heretic, sought to support his
doctrines by texts from the Bible. The entreaties
and kind reproofs of his friends only confirmed him
in his errors, and he boldly exclaimed: " If this
work be of man, it will come to naught; but if it be
of God, ye cannot overthrow it."

At the expiration of this time, the emperor, tired
of the fruitless endeavors to reconcile the monk, and
shocked, moreover, by his scandalous conduct,1 or
dered him to quit the city at once. Luther de
parted. On his way to Wittenberg, he was seized
upon, as he had pre-arranged with the Elector of
Saxony, by five masked men, and carried to the
Castle of Wartburg. He lived here, dressed as a
knight and under the assumed name of Younker
George, from May, 1521, to March, 1522.

1 Alzog III, 40.

VII.

BY order of the emperor, the papal legate, Alean-
dro, drew up an edict against the Augustinian monk
in the form of the ancient imperial decrees. Luther
and his followers were banned the Empire ; his writ
ings were condemned to the flames.

Luther's teachings deprived man of all free-will,
and therefore levelled him with the beast and shook
society to its very foundation. Charles, as guardian
of civil society, was bound in conscience to eradicate
the evil ; and in order to effect this, he had to en
force severe measures against the apostate monk
and his adherents. Luther seemed to the emperor
possessed by an evil spirit. " By his writings," the
edict says, " Luther spreads bad fruits. He violates
the number, order and use of the sacraments ; he
stains the indestructible law of marriage ; he covers
the pope with shameful and libellous epithets ; he
despises the priesthood and induces the laity to
wash their hands in the blood of the priests. He
denies the liberty of human will and defends a loose
and lawless life, as he dared to tear down the sacred
bars of morality by publicly burning the ecclesia
stical books of canon law. He reviles the ecumenical
councils and has called that of Constance, which
gave back to the German nation peace and unity,
a synagogue of the devil. Like an evil spirit in the
habit of a monk, he gathers together old and new
heresies, pretending to preach faith, while, under the

a*

30 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

motto and pretext of evangelical liberty, he is
destroying the true faith and suppressing all good
order." l

This is the sincere verdict of the noble Charles V.
and of many of the states upon the new doctrine of
Martin Luther. Let us now consider Luther's own
opinion of himself and his doctrine, as far as we
can deduce it from his familiar conversations and
letters.

Especially during his stay in the Castle of Wart-
burg, anxiety, doubt and remorse of conscience in
regard to his new work began to torment him. " It
is a dangerous thing," he says, " to change all spiri
tual and human order against common sense."2
On November 25th, 1521, he wrote to the Augus-
tinians in Wittenberg: "With how much pain and
labor did I scarcely justify my conscience that I
alone should proceed against the pope, hold him for
Antichrist and the bishops for his apostles ! How
often did my heart punish me and reproach me with
this strong argument : ' Art thou alone wise ?
Could all the others err and have erred for a long
time ? How, if thou errest and leadest into error so
many people, who would all be damned forever ? ' "3
He often tried to rid himself of these anxieties, but
they always returned. Even in his old age, a voice
within, which he believed to be the voice of the
devil, asked him if he were called to preach the
Gospel in such a manner " as for many centuries no
bishop nor saint had dared to do ? "4 His struggles

1 Vide Janssen II, 168.

2 De Wette 2, 2. 10 sq.
a De Wette 2, 107.

< See S&mmtKche Werke, 59, 286 ; 60, 6. 45.

DR. MAR TIN L UTHER. 3 1

with the devil, whom he thought he saw in every
shape and form, are well known. In his * Haus-
postille ' he says : " The devil sometimes puts on a
mask, as I myself have seen ; just as if he were a
pig or a burning wisp of straw or something of the
kind." He told his friend Myconius that in the
Castle of Wartburg the devil came twice to kill him
in the form of a dog.1 In his garden he saw the
devil under the appearance of a black wild-boar ; in
Coburg, under the form of a star.2

Luther was convinced of a contract between
witches and Satan, and he declared himself ready to
burn witches with his own hand.3 He confessed
that he taught wrong, destroyed the former peace
ful condition of the Church, and caused scandal,
discord and riots by his doctrine ; 4 and "I cannot
deny it," he added ; " I often feel alarmed about it."
After having preached for twenty years, " he wond
ered why he could not put any trust in his doctrine,
while his disciples believed it." 5

" Antonius Musa, parish priest at Rochlitz," Mat-
thesius writes, " told me that he once complained
heartily to Luther that he could not believe what
he preached to others. ' Thanks be to God,' replied
Luther, ' that there are other people to whom this
happens; I thought I was the only one who felt
so.' " 6 Luther tried to convince himself, for con
solation in his doubts, that even St. Paul could not

Myconius, Hist. Reform, 42.

Matthesius, Histoire 184.

Lauterbach's Tagebuch, Dresden 1872. p. 105 and 121.

Sdmmtliche Werke, 46, 226 sq.

Stonmtliche Werke, 62, 122.

Matthesius, Hist. 139.

32 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

believe his doctrine, and that this was the sting of
the flesh of which that Apostle speaks. According
to him, St. Paul's words, " I die daily/* should be
interpreted, " I doubt daily about my doctrine."1

Luther's spiritual and physical afflictions, his anx
iety and remorse, and his deep struggles with himself
are truly heartrending. A certain preacher once
told him that the devil had tempted him to kill him
self with a knife. " This same thing," replied the
reformer, "often happened to me also: that, when I
took a knife into my hand, such bad thoughts came
to my mind that often I could not pray, and the devil
chased me out of the room about it." 3 Luther, like
Job, wished that he had never been born, and that
he had never appeared with his books.3 He wrote
to Melanchthon: " I am tossed about in the storms
and floods of despair and blasphemy." 4

He sought to quiet the unceasing voice of con
science by ample potations, by joking and amuse
ment, and by putting himself into violent fits of
rage.5 He worked himself into such a passionate
and testy humor that he excited the astonishment
and horror of his contemporaries. " These are great
rascals," he thought, " who say we should not scold
the pope." 6 When he could not pray, he would
picture to himself the Holy Pontiff; then his heart
would burn with anger and hatred, and his prayers

1 SiimmtKcke Werke, 60, 1 08.

a Sammtliche Werkc, 60, 6 1.

a De Wette 5, 153.

« De Wette 3, 189.

• De Wette 4, 188.

« Sfytimtliche Werke, 60, 129.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 33

would become fervent.1 " I cannot pray without
cursing." Here is the pious reformer's improvement
on the old " Our Father:" " If I would say: * Hal
lowed be thy name,' I must say: * Cursed, damned,
destroyed be the names of the papists ! ' Will I
say: ' Thy kingdom come,' I must say: ' Cursed,
damned, destroyed be the papacy!' Thus I pray
every day without ceasing, orally and in my heart."2
Everything that excited his anger or was opposed
to him ought to be destroyed. He preached a re
lentless war, not only against the papacy and the
diabolical hearts of his adversaries, but also against
the Jews; these he covered with all the choice epi
thets of his own refined vocabulary. His language
became so savage and indecent that his contempo
rary, Pirkheimer, judged him either a madman or
one possessed by an evil spirit, and Dantiscus, after
visiting him, described him as a demoniac.

Luther's friends begged of him to soften his lan
guage and rein in his violence, so as not to excite
the people to rebellion and plunge Germany into
irreparable misery; but it was all in vain. Zasius
wrote to Bonifacius Amerbach : " Luther, in his
impudence, twists the whole Sacred Scripture of the
Old and New Testament, from the first chapter of
Genesis to the end, into menaces and imprecations
against the popes, bishops and priests; as if, through
all the centuries, God Almighty had no other busi
ness than to thunder against priests. Luther's spirit
generates enmities, brawls, riots, sects, hatred and

i Sdmmtliche Werke, 60, 107— lo8.
8 SSmmtliche Werke, 25, 108.

34 -frff . MAR TIN L UTHER.

murder."1 Count Hoyer of Mansfield wrote in 1522
to Ulrich of Helfenstein: " I have been all along, as
I was at Worms, a good Lutheran; but I have
learned that Luther is a blackguard, and as good a
drunkard as there is one in Mansfield, delighting to be
in the company of beautiful women and to play
upon his flute. His conduct is unbecoming, and he
seems irretrievably fallen." 2

The coarseness and vulgarity of Luther's charac
ter are clearly displayed in the works which he
wrote in the Castle of Wartburg: " On the Abuse
of Masses," " Against the Idol of Halle," and " On
Monastic Vows." In these inflammatory pamphlets
he very brightly calls the pope " the devil's pig;"
monks and priests are " the devil's own people and
servants, no better than hangmen and murderers."
He very flatteringly titles the bishops " unchris
tian, unlearned monkies, the miracles of God's
wrath." In the same elegant language he railed
against the seats of learning, the universities, which
he called " temples of Moloch and dens of murder
ers." " From these sinks of iniquity," he said, " pro
ceed the locusts (Apoc. 9) who in all places, spiri
tually and temporally, govern the whole world; so
that even the devil himself could not have invented,
for the suppression of the faith and the Gospel, any
thing stronger than these high schools."

Hoefler in his ' Life of Adrian VI.' remarks very
truly of Luther's language : ' " Nobody can say of
this diction that it was used in order to hide thoughts.
But the people is to be pitied whom the ' Reformer'

1 Riegger, Zasii epist. 72. Ulmae IJ44-
* Alzog III, 131, note 2,

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 35

fed with such language. Luther always remained
true to this vulgarity, and the nation visibly grew
coarse and rude." " In a few years this barbarity
made incredible progress in Germany ; and the
poison of theological hatred passed, like a sad herit
age, from the apartments of the apostate monks to
the lower classes of the nation, destroying every
thing and filling all things with its pest ; changing
the great, spiritual movement of humanism into a
dogmatic contest." Luther had assumed a cynical
style which surpassed everything up to his time ;
and his vulgar language contrasted strongly with
the sublimity of the subjects which he treated.

This unrefined language was taken up and used
against the reformer himself. He was called a
drunkard by his own friends, "f rater, pater, potator]
and regarded as insane and possessed by an evil
spirit. " Luther," said Zwinglius, " was not pos
sessed by one impure spirit, but by a legion of dev
ils." Erasmus described the 'Reformer' as "a
boar which devastates the Lord's vineyards." Sir
Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England and
one of the greatest scholars of the time, calls him
" latrinarius nebula" " qui nihil in capite concipit
praeter stultitias, furores, amentias ; qui niJiil habet
in ore praeter latrinas, inertias, stercora"

An enemy to every form of true enlightenment and
education, Luther was enraged over the fact that
the greatest and best part of the German youth was
educated at the universities. " Every body thinks,"
he says, " that in no place under heaven youth can
be better instructed than at the universities ; so that
even monks go thither." " He, who has not at-

36 DR. MAR TIN L UTHER.

tended the high schools, knows nothing ; but he,
who has attended them and studied there, knows
everything. For one is supposed to learn all divine
and human arts in these high schools, and parents
are believed to do well in sending their children to
them, and thus making them smart and well fitted
for the service of God." "This people makes great
lords, doctors and masters skilled to govern other
peoples ; as we may see with our own eyes, nobody
can become a preacher or a pastor unless he be a
Master or a Doctor or at least graduate of the high
schools." It pained him greatly to see so many
attend the high schools and study for the priest
hood. "Everybody," he said, speaking of his time,
" strove to become a holy priest or a monk. And
when the time came for the young man to say his
first mass, oh ! how happy did that mother feel who
had borne him and given him to the service of God." l
" There was not a father or a mother,who did not wish
their child to become a priest, a monk or a nun. Thus
youth and the best of the world went in crowds to
the devil."2 "It was a deplorable misery that a
boy was obliged to study for twenty years and
longer still, in order to become a priest and to say
mass ; and whosoever arrived at this, was happy,
and happy was the mother who had borne that
child."3

1 Sdmmtliche Werke, 49, 317 ; IO, 403.
a SZmmtliche Werke, 52, 241.
s Sdmmtliche Werkc, 22, 196.

VIII.

WHILE Luther proposed the Bible as the only
source and rule of faith, he undermined its authority
by his prefaces to the different books of his version.
His translation, as Doellinger very ably shows,1
is so worded as to fit his own system of belief. He
adds and rejects words without the least scruple
whenever he finds it advantageous to his new doc
trine. About the four gospels he remarks: "The
first three speak of our Lord's works rather than of
his oral teaching; that of St. John is the only sym
pathetic, the only true gospel, and should without
doubt be preferred to the others. In like manner
the epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter are superior
to the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke." 2 He
does not recognize the epistle of St. James as " the
writing of an apostle." " Compared with the epistles
of St. Paul, this is, in truth, an epistle of straw; it
contains absolutely nothing to remind one of the
style of the gospel." 3 Nor is he satisfied with the
whole of St. Paul's writings; speaking of the Letters
to the Hebrews, he says: " It needs not surprise one
to find there bits of wood, hay and straw." 4 Of
the Apocalypse he writes: " There are many things
objectionable in this book. To my mind, it bears

i Doellinger's Reformation, III, 139-173.

* Sammtlichc Werke, 63, 115.

• Sammtliche Werke, 63, 115, 156-158.
+ S&mmtli{he Werket 63, 154-155.

38 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

upon itself no marks of an apostolic or prophetic
character. It is not the habit of the apostles to
speak in metaphors; on the contrary, when they
utter a prophecy, they do so in clear and precise
terms. Everyone may form his own judgment of
this book; as for myself I feel an aversion to it, and
to me this is sufficient reason for rejecting it." l In
other words, the Bible's authority according to
Luther is to be recognized as far only as it agrees
with one's " spirit ". Chr. I. von Bunsen, a Protestant
author, calls Luther's translation of the Bible "the
most incorrect, though bearing the marks of a great
genius;" "three thousand passages need correction."
Luther was now beyond the pale of the true
Church; but without an infallible Church there can
be no infallible Bible. "With the Church", says
Cardinal Wiseman, " the Holy Scripture is a book
of life; without her it may be a book of death".
Carl von Bodmann wrote in August 1523: "To
what will Luther's principle of explaining the Bible's
authority pass? He rejects this book and that as
not apostolic, as spurious, as not agreeing with his
spirit. Other people reject other books for the same
reasons, and finally the whole Bible will be denied
and treated like any other profane book. And yet
they call it a tyranny unheard of, that the common
man is forbidden to read Luther's translation. Al
ready many begin to despise the authority of the
Scripture and even faith in the divinity of Christ be
cause they despise the authority of the Church and
her teachings. And these sad cases become more
frequent the more the Church is insulted in her

* S&mmtlichc Werke, 63, 169-170.

J&fc MAR TIN L UTHER. 39

authority, the pope and bishops, by Luther and his

followers."

After having done away with the infallible author
ity of the Church, Luther, like all other heretics,
made himself an infallible authority. He wrote to
the Prince Elector of Saxony on March 5th, 1522:
"I have not received my Gospel from men, but
from heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ; so that
I desire to be called henceforth an Evangelist ! " l
Cranach, the painter, often represented the reformer
as a new saint, and his pictures were sold publicly.
Luther calls himself "by the grace of God Eccles-
iastes of Wittenberg, who not only has his doctrine
from heaven, but is one who has more power in his
little finger than a thousand popes, kings, princes
and doctors." "Whosoever teaches differently from
what I have taught, or whosoever condemns, he
condemns God and must remain a child of hell." 2
At an other time he says: "I will not have my
doctrine judged by anyone, not even by angels.
For as I am convinced of it, I shall be through it
your and the angels' judge; so that he, who refuses
my doctrine, may not be saved. For it is God's
doctrine, and not mine; therefore my judgment is
God's, and not my own." 3

Luther, in a thankless letter, informed his kind
patron, the Prince Elector Frederic, that he had left
the castle of Wartburg and returned to Wittenberg.
"Be it known to your Highness," he says, "that I
go to Wittenberg under the protection of a prov-

1 De Wette, 2, 139.

» Sdmmtliche Werke, 28, 346.

• SQmmtlicfo ffcrfo, 2.8, 144.

40 DJ?. MAR TIN L UTHER.

idencc Stronger than that of princes and electors.
I have no need of your support, but you have of
mine; it will be of advantage to you etc." l He
arrived in Wittenberg on Good Friday, 1522. Sev
eral priests and monks were already applying pract
ically the doctrine which he taught in his pamphlet
on "Monastic Vows", and had broken their solemn
vows of celibacy. "Good God!" Luther wrote to
Spalatinus; "our Wittenbergers will end by giving
a wife to every monk; but they shall not do so to

me." *

While Luther was absent from Wittenberg, his
disciples, being excited by Carlstadt, caused great
havoc in that city. Carlstadt, at the head of an in
furiated mob, had broken into the churches, demol
ishing altars and sacred vessels and destroying the
paintings and other works of art. Luther con
demned this vandalism in a letter which he wrote
from the Wartburg. " I condemn images," he says,
" but I desire to attack them with preaching and
not with flames." (Nicholao Hausmann, March ijth,
1522.) Staupitz showed Carlstadt this letter, but
that Vandal replied: " Be silent; do you then forget
that Luther has written: 'The Lord's word is not a
word of peace, but a sword'?" 3 Erasmus also pro
tested against Carlstadt's barbarity. " Whoever
deprives us of painting", he says, "deprives ex
istence of its greatest charms; painting is often a
better interpreter than language."*

1 De Wette, Vol. II, p. 17.

' De Wette, 2, 40.

« De Wette, I, 420.

* gpistolae, Lib. 31, Ep. $9

IX.

IMMEDIATELY after his arrival in Wittenberg
Luther began to preach on " misunderstanding1
Christian liberty " or began, as he characteristically
expressed himself, " to rap these visionaries on the
snout." Shocked at the atrocious conduct of his
brother reformers, he exclaimed: "what is the mean
ing of these novelties which have been introduced
in my absence ? Was I at such a distance that I
could not be consulted ? Am I no longer the
principle of the pure word? I have preached it; I
have printed it; and I have done more harm to the
papacy, while sleeping or drinking Wittenberg beer
with Philip and Amsdorf, than all the princes and
emperors together." l He regarded this fine play,
begun by the devil through Carlstadt and the new
prophets, as a just punishment for his own humble
conduct before the emperor at the Diet of Worms.
He now called the emperor a tyrant. He no longer
contented himself with declaiming against the pap
acy; he railed at secular princes also. He especially
hated Duke George of Saxony, who, in accordance
with the edict of Worms, was trying to quell the
new doctrine and its followers. " Should the princes
continue to listen to the stupid brains of Duke
George*', he says, " then, I fear, an insurrection is
before the door." This duke " imagines that he eats

1 See Sammtliche Werke% 28, 204-285.

4*

42 DR. MAR TIN L UTHER.

Christ as a wolf swallows a fly". The princes should
know that " the sword of civil war is suspended
above their heads ", and it seemed to him as if he
saw " Germany swimming in blood ". l

In July, 1522, he published his pamphlet, " Against
the Falsely Called Ecclesiastical State of Pope and
Bishops." In this pamphlet he boldly demanded
the expulsion of the bishops, denouncing them as
wolves, donkies, tyrants and apostles of Antichrist,
In addition to this, he printed a " Bull of the Refor
mation," in which he majestically declares: " All
who assist, and risk their bodies, goods and honor
in the destruction of bishoprics and the regimen of
bishops, are the dear children of God, and true Chris
tians; and they keep the commandment of God and
fight against the order of the devil. But all who
are obedient to the bishops, are the devil's own ser
vants, and fight against the order and law of God."
In concluding, the " Pope of Wittenberg" says:
"This is my, Doctor Luther's, bull; which giveth as
a reward God's grace to all who keep it and follow
it. Amen!"2

Leo X. departed from this life on Dec. 1st, 1521.
He was succeeded by Adrian VL, an humble, but
learned and holy priest, who had formerly been pre
ceptor of Charles V. Adrian, earnestly desiring to
end the religious confusion in Germany, sent Chiere-
gati, Bishop of Teramo, to Niirnberg as his legate.
The States had assembled in diet in Nov., 1522.
The nuncio emphatically demanded the execution
of the edict of Worms, and urged the States to take

i De Wette 2, 157-158.

• S&mmtlicht Wcrhe, 28, 142-201.

DR . MAR TIN L UTHER. 43

vigorous measures against the apostate monk. He
foretold that " the revolt, now directed against the
spiritual authority, would shortly deal a blow against
temporal also." His entreaties, however, missed
their effect, on account of the weakness and luke-
warmness of the States, and their growing disre
spect to papal authority. But they promised to
prevent, as far as possible, the spreading of the new
doctrine until the convocation of a council. They,
moreover, issued an exhortation, which was to be
read to the people, every Sunday, from the pulpits,
" to invoke God humbly, and to ask him that he
may take away that error, which is now rising and
growing everywhere, from all Christian authorities,
spiritual and temporal, and from other Christian
people ; and that he may grant the grace that all
may live, keep and remain in the unity of holy Chris
tian faith, and thus obtain the way of eternal hap
piness." *

Luther continued to spurn all authority and pro
fessed a desire to live " under the Turks rather than
under the Papists." Enraged against those princes
who opposed his new doctrine and the sale of his
books, he furiously attacked them in his libel, " The
Secular Magistracy." Here are a few choice extracts
from this work: "»God Almighty has made our
princes mad ; so that they imagine they can act and
command their subjects as they please. — These
blackguards, who now wish to be called Christian
Princes. — God delivers the princes to their repro
bate senses ; they wish even to govern souls, and
thus they bring upon themselves God's and all

1 In the Archives of Frankfurt.

44 &K- MARTIN LUTHER.

people's hatred, and in this way they perish with
the bishops, priests and monks ; one rascal with
the other. — Since the beginning of the world a wise
and prudent prince has been a rare bird upon earth,
but rarer still a prince (who was) a good man. They
commonly are the greatest fools and rascals upon
earth, of whom we need expect but little good.
They are the lictors and hangmen of God, whom
his divine wrath employs to punish the wicked and
keep exterior peace. A great lord is our God ;
therefore he needs must have such noble, high
born, wealthy executioners and policemen. — The
people, wearied of your tyranny and iniquity, can no
longer bear it. God wills it not. The world is no
longer what it was, when you could hunt men as
you could deer." l

In May, 1523, when Adrian VI. canonized Benno,
Bishop of Misnia, Luther published his pamphlet,
" Against the New Idol and the Old Devil," in which,
among other things, he said : " The living Satan
permits himself to be worshipped under the name
of Benno." He calls the pope "an impious hypo
crite, the determined enemy of God's Word, who
kills the living saints of the Lord, and canonizes the
slave of Rome or rather the devil himself. 2 No
wonder that the learned Erasmus exclaimed at this
savage production: "Who can convince me that those
are guided by the spirit of Christ, whose manners are
so opposed to the doctrines of Christ ! Formerly
the Gospel made the fierce mild, the spoiler merci
ful, the turbulant peaceful, the slanderer charitable ;

1 SftmmtKche Werkt, 22, 59-105.
3 SUmmtliche Werke% 24, 237-257.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 45

but these (evangelists) excite fury, take by fraud
the property of others, create disturbances every
where, and speak evil of the good, and just. I see
new hypocrites, new tyrants ; but not a mite of the
spirit of the Gospel."1

The Diet of Nurnberg promised to sustain, in their
action, those bishops who should punish married
ecclesiatics and religious who left their monasteries
or convents with canonical penalties. But Luther,
despising all human and divine authority, advised
the knights of the Teutonic Order to break their
vows, divide the property of the order between them
and take wives. He advanced the following startling
piece of information as his only argument: "It is
much better to live in concubinage than in chastity;
the latter is an unpardonable sin ; the former, by
God's aid, will not infer the loss of salvation." a
In fact, the pure "Reformer" thought it impossible
for poor human nature to observe chastity. 3 His
sermon on marriage is so filthy and obscene that it
would bring a blush to the brow of a Pagan ; we
therefore pass it in silence. Marriage, according to
him, is but a mere ceremony, which "no vice or sin
could prevent." * He even went so far as to write
in January, 1524: "Indeed I confess that I cannot
prevent polygamy, as it is not against the Holy
Scripture ; but there are many things permissible
which, in order to avoid scandal, ought not becom
ingly to be done among Christians." 6 "From this

1 Erasmi Epist. 69, ad Melancht. p. 726.

2 Ulenberg, Hist, de vita Luther •/, p. 187,

3 De Wette, 2, 372.

4 Sammiliche Werket 20, 60-73.
* De Wette, 2, 459.

46 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

immoral teaching," wrote Emser in 1524, "one can
easily conclude that Luther is no true Ecclesiastes
or Prophet ; but rather one of those of whom Christ
says : * Beware of false prophets'."

One of the most clearly marked consequences of
the "new doctrine" is the decline of the spirit of
charity and mercy. The Church teaches that by
good works man can show practically his faith in
Christ and can gather merits for eternity. A firm
belief in this doctrine was the cause of very many
pious donations and legacies to hospitals, orphanages
and other charitable institutions. A firm belief in
this doctrine built up magnificent cathedrals and
churches, and adorned them with those matchless
works of art which even in our days of materialism
call out the admiration and astonishment of the
coarse Luther's polished friends. A firm faith in this
doctrine founded the universities and monastic
schools and enabled them to teach everything which
at that time was known to men. But the new doc
trine on justification by faith alone taught that good
works were altogether unnecessary ; and conse
quently, almsgiving and the generous charity which
had prompted it became things of the past.

Luther himself praised the generosity by which
people were wont to be actuated in the old days of
the papacy: " Then it snowed down alms, donations
and legacies ; but under the evangelicals nobody
gives a penny. " " Under the papacy the people
were generous and gave willingly; but now, under
the Gospel, nobody gives anything, but one oppresses
the other and each one desires to possess everything.

1 S&mmtliche Werke^ 43, 164.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 47

And the longer the Gospel is preached, the more
deeply are people drowned in avarice, pride and
pomp."1 " Under the papacy everybody was kind
and generous; they gave cheerfully with both hands
and with great piety. But now, though they ought
to show themselves thankful for the Holy Gospel,
nobody wants to give, but only to take."2 They
have learned nothing now but to oppress, rob, steal
and commit all kinds of fraud. " " Tell me," the
Doctor asks, " what city is so strong or so pious as
to collect enough to support a schoolmaster or a
pastor ? If we had not the charitable alms and
donations of our ancestors, the Gospel would be de
stroyed in city and country, and no poor preacher
could be supported." 3

1 Sammtliche Werke, 5, 264-265.

8 S&mmtliche Werke> 13, 123.

8 Sdmmtliche Werket 14, 389-390.

X.

IN the absence of Charles V, the States had again
assembled in Niirnberg in November, 1524. Cam-
peggio, the legate of Clement VII, urged them, in
the name of the Holy Father, to take decisive
measures against the new doctrine; but they showed
themselves once more weak and slothful. They ab
surdly demanded a council at the next Diet in Spire,
at which even the laity should have the right of
reconsidering the doctrines which the Holy See had
publicly condemned. At the same time they prom
ised to do whatever they could toward enforcing the
edict of Worms and protecting the faith of the
Catholic Church.

This action of the States was entirely disapproved
of by both the pope and the emperor. On the other
hand, it drove Luther into a frantic fit of madness
and, as usual, he gave vent to his feelings by a new
literary production. In this he attacked furiously
both the emperor and the princes. "It sounds
shamefully," he writes, " to hear emperor and princes
tell public lies, and still more shamefully to perceive
them issuing at the same time contradictory decrees,
proscribing me by the edict of Worms on the one
hand and on the other appointing a Diet at Spire to
examine what is good or evil in my books. Thus I
am condemned and at the same time reserved to be
condemned. The Germans shall regard and per-

48

DR. MAR TIN L UTHER. 49

secute me as one already condemned, and yet will
wait until I shall be condemned. These princes must
be drunken and mad! Well, we Germans must
remain Germans, asses and victims of the pope,
although we are, * ground in a mortar like chaff', as
Solomon says. I perceive that God does not wish
me to deal with rational beings ; he delivers me to
German brutes, as to wolves and boars. God is too
wise for you ; he has made you fools. God is power
ful ; he will crush you." l

He even warned and besought the people not to
assist their princes against the hereditary foes of
Christianity and civilization, the Turks, who were at
that time threatening to devastate the Christian
world : "I ask you all, dear Christians, not to pray
to God for these blind princes, of whom he makes
use to chastise us in his greath wrath. Beware of
giving your alms and assistance against the Turks,
who are a thousand times more wise and pious than
our princes." Then he goes on to insult the emperor:
"This worm of earth, who is not sure of an hour of
life, who is not ashamed to proclaim himself the high
and mighty defender of faith. God help us, how
mad is the world ! The king of England also calls
himself 'the Defender of Faith and the Christian
Church ' and the Hungarians sing in their litany :
' O Lord, hear us, thy defenders !'' (On account of)
these things I complain to all pious Christians to
join with me in pitying such mad, stupid, raging,
furious fools ! Better far to die ten times than to
listen to such blasphemies against the majesty of
Heaven. Yes, it is their deserved reward to per-

i Stonmtlichf W<:rkct 24, 211 sequ.

50 DR. MAR TIN L UTHER.

secute the Word of God ; therefore they are punished
with blindness. May God deliver us from them and
give us in his mercy other masters ! Amen !" l

"Can such a one," asks a contemporary, "who
writes thus and represents the emperor and princes
as obdurate fools and idiots, deny that he excites
the people against their lawful authority ? " 2

Luther taught that every community has the
right to judge all its doctrine and to appoint and
depose its pastors. Commenting on the words of
Christ, " Beware of false prophets," he drew the fol
lowing very logical conclusion : There can be no
false prophet among the hearers, but only among
the preachers ; therefore all preachers must and
should be subject to the judgment of the hearers
in regard to their doctrine. In another place he
says : " An individual Christian has so much power
that even without the calling he may rise and teach
if the preacher be absent. Bishops, however, and
other spiritual superiors, who sit in the devil's place
and are wolves, have as much right to preaching
and the care of souls among Christians as the Turks
and Jews. They had better drive asses and dogs.
They are tyrants and rascals, who treat us as the
devil's apostles would do."3

According to this principle of Luther's every
one could judge what was true doctrine and what
false, and everybody had the right, whenever he felt
inspired, of rising up from his place and teaching his
less favored brethren. Thomas Miinzer saw this

l SSmmtliche Werke, 24, 236-237.

* Gloss. £ Comment. Strassburg, 1524, See Bl. Ml,

i S&mmtliche Werke^ 22, 140-151.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. JI

clearly. Thomas Miinzer was a disciple of Luther
and one of the earliest ' reformers/ He listened
faithfully to the Evangelist of Wittenberg, and after
one of his sermons came to the conclusion that
Luther's doctrine was entirely false ; and that he
himself had been forced down from heaven for the
purpose of preaching to benighted mortals the Word
of God in all its purity. Accordingly he immedi
ately corresponded with his vocation and began to
preach. In his sermons he complimented Luther
with having " confessed Christendom with a false
faith," and called him "an Archdevil who without
any sense makes God the cause of evil."1 He op
posed Luther's doctrinal views, but agreed with him
in rejecting the authority of the Church and all ex
terior revelation. Man, according to him, does not
receive divine revelation through the Church nor
through preaching nor even through the Bible, but
through the Spirit of God who speaks to him di
rectly. His sermons tended towards supporting a
mystical communism, "far more comprehensible to
the illiterate peasantry," says Alzog, "than the
religious equality and freedom advocated by Lu
ther."

Carlstadt, Luther's old professor, had also chosen
a path for himself and was preaching a doctrine en
tirely different from that of his pupil. 'Luther vainly
endeavored " to bring Carlstadt to a Christian
sense", and they met in the Black Boar Inn at Jena,
in the presence of a great many spectators. At this
venerable Council of the fathers they called each
other liars and reproached each other with vanity

1 Jnnssen II, 368.

$2 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

and pride. "Luther", said Carlstadt, "preaches
the Gospel falsely and is continually contradicting
himself". At the close of the disputation Carlstadt
exclaimed: "If what Luther said be true, God grant
that the devil may tear me to pieces before you!"

A certain shoemaker, who had been reading the
Bible, also tried to convince the "Reformer" that
he was in error. During this memorable controversy
both parties became so excited and lost control of
themselves so completely, that Luther rejoiced ex
ceedingly when he had left the city far behind him.
" I was glad", he wrote, "that they did not throw
stones and mud at me, as several of them gave me
the following blessing: 'Go away in a thousand
devils' names! May you break your neck before you
get out of the city! ' " -1 The enlightenment which
he had taken so many pains to sow among the
people, was already sending forth its fruit.

Luther published about this time a pamphlet
"Against the Heavenly Prophets", in which he de
fended his teaching against Carlstadt, Munzer and
others. If we may judge from the tone of this book,
the Protestant author, Lange, spoke truly when he
said: "Luther's imperious nature would allow no
one else to have his own way".

De\Vette2, 575.

XI.

ERASMUS, the greatest scholar of that age, had at
first sympathized with Luther, as he expected that
the Reformer's movement would tend towards cor
recting certain abuses in the Church's discipline ;
and Luther, on his part, had endeavored by flattery
to secure the friendship of Erasmus, whom he called
the "glory and hope of Germany. " But when Eras
mus perceived that Luther's teachings, instead of
reforming, produced confusion and disorder and
threatened to undermine ~ociety itself, he grew
alarmed, and directed against the Doctor his book
on "Free Will. " "Luther replied immediately with
a pamphlet on " Slave Will."1 In this he openly
professes a fatalistic doctrine which seems to bring
into Christianity the extravagant " Kismet" of the
Koran. " The almighty power, " he says, "and the
eternal providence destroy all free will. Even our
reason must confess that there is no free will either
in God or in man." Professing a Persian Dualism, —
good and evil principles contending for the posses
sion of man, — he continues: "Does God leap into
the saddle ? The horse is obedient and accomodates
itself to every movement of the rider, and goes
whither he wills it. Does God throw down the
reins ? Then Satan leaps upon the back of the
animal, which bends, moves forward and submits to

1 De servo arbitrio in Op. hit. 7, 1 13 seq.

53

54 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

the spurs and caprices of its new rider. The will
cannot choose its rider and cannot kick against the
spur that pricks it. It must get on, and its very
docility is a disobedience or a sin. The only struggle
possible is between the two riders, God and the
devil, who dispute the momentary possession of the
steed. And then is fulfilled the saying of the Psalm
ist : 'I am become like a beast of burden.' Let the
Christian, then, know that God forsees nothing con
tingently ; but that he forsees, proposes and acts
from his eternal and immutable will. This is the
thunderbolt that shatters and destroys free will.
Hence it comes to pass that whatever happens, hap
pens according to the irreversible decrees of God.
Therefore necessity, not free will, is the controlling
principle of our conduct. God is the author of what
is evil in us, as well as of what is good; and, as he
bestows happiness on those who merit it not, so also
does he damn others who do not deserve their fate."

Since the year 1524 a host of reformers had passed
through the southwest of Germany and through
Switzerland. Each one of these followed Luther's
example in claiming a heavenly mission and in prov
ing his new doctrine by texts from the Bible. Some
of them gave practical interpretations to different
passages of the Scriptures, which were singular and
wild in the extreme. We shall quote a few curious
cases as examples of this : l

In St. Gall a number of men suddenly awoke to
the significance of the divine precept, " Go into the
whole world and preach the Gospel ". Accordingly
they met in the town, and by mutual agreement

1 See references in Janssen's History II, 386.

DR. MARTIN LUTHE&. $J

rushed through the city-gates toward the four quar
ters of the earth. In Appenzell twelve thousand
persons assembled according to the text : " Do not
care of what you shall eat " and abstained from food
until hunger compelled them to disperse. Some
climbed upon the roofs of houses and preached from
these exalted stations because Christ had said :
"That which you hear in the ear, preach ye upon
the house-tops". Others again threw the Bible into
the fire according to their interpretation of the div
ine word : "The letter killeth ; the spirit vivifieth."
This general confusion and religious anarchy, the
natural consequence of Luther's doctrine on private
judgement, was a severe trial to the reformer him
self. In a letter which he addressed to the Chris
tians of Antwerp, he made the following confession:
" One rejects baptism ; another the Eucharist ;
another constructs a new world between the present
and that which will arise after the last judgment ;
some deny the divinity of Christ. One says this ;
the other that ; there are as many sects as there are
heads. Every booby imagines himself inspired by the
Holy Ghost and wants to be a prophet." l He also
complained of the growing demoralization and bru
tality which existed among those people who had re
ceived the new doctrine: "Our Evangelicals are seven
times worse than they were before. For since we
have learned the Gospel, we steal, tell lies, deceive,
gormandize, tipple and commit all kinds of vice."
He found himself in 1523 "living in the midst of
Sodom, Gomorrha and Babylon ". a "I remember ",

i DeWettes, 61.

l S&mmtlicht Werkt, 28,420 ; 36,41$, 300,

56 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

he says again, " that when I was young, the majority
of people, even of the rich folks, drank but water
and were content with coarse food ; some hardly
touched wine even after the age of thirty. But now
they accustom the very children to drink wine, and
not of a bad and weaker kind, but strong and foreign
wines, even distilled liquors, which they sip in the
morning before breakfast." On another occasion he
remarks : " Drunkenness is now a common habit
not only of the rough, illiterate mob and the peas
ants in villages and open taverns, but even of the
nobility and the sons of noblemen in cities."1

Erasmus, also, complained of the growing im
morality and lawlessness which were evidently the
fruits of the new doctrine. He wrote to Luther in
1524: "These innovations produce many corrupt
and rebellious people, and I fear a bloody insurrec
tion ". * But Luther continued to excite the people
to open rebellion. "A common destruction of all
monasteries and convents ", he said, 3 " would be
the best reformation, because they are useless and
one could do without them. It would be well to
destroy all churches in the whole world and to
preach, pray and baptize in the open air". In a
New-Year's sermon he informed his audience that
priests and monks were the worst people on earth,
— worse than the Turks. 4 In those times the pope
was represented as an ass, and the monk as a calf,
not only in oral and written addresses, but also in
pictorial representations. Luther wished to under
mine all spiritual authority.

1 Sammttiche Werke> 8, 293—297 ; 18,350 ; 2O, 273. a Doellinger,
Reformation I, 6— 18. 8 See SdmnitHche Wcrket ^t 121, 131, 222, 223,
330. * Sammtliche Werktt 1 6, 33.

XII.

THE peasants were at this time in a wretched and
impoverished condition. Boettinger, in his History
of Germany, says: u The temporal or spiritual lord
treated his peasantry like slaves. They were sub
ject to him in soul as well as in body. If he changed
his religion, the vassal was obliged to adopt that of
his master without a murmur". It is not, therefore,
surprising that the peasantry received with joy
Luther's works on "Christian Liberty" and " Secular
Magistracy", which did away with all authority and
exhorted a revolt. They hailed Luther as their de
liverer from a heavy and irksome yoke.

" The peasantry", Alzog says, " inflamed by the
fanatical teachings and fiery appeals of the sectaries,
rather than driven to excess by the tyranny and ex
tortions of feudal lords, rose in open and organized
rebellion. In a manifesto, consisting of twelve
articles based upon texts drawn from the writings of
Luther, the peasants claimed first of all the right of
appointing and removing at will the ministers of

the Gospel The peasants, assembling in

large bodies, would proceed to plunder and burn
convents, demolish the strongholds of the nobility
and commit every sort of outrage and atrocity".

The author of a controversial work, published in
1532, says very truly: "Luther first sounded the
tocsin ; lie cannot clear himself from the rebellion,

57

$8 DR. MAR TIN L UTHER.

although he wrote that the common folks should
not use force without the magistracy. The common
people do not hear that ; but they observe whatever
part of Luther's sermons and writing they please." 1
Zasius wrote to his friend Amerbach in 1525:
" Luther, this pest of peace, this most pernicious
of all two-legged beings, has plunged the whole
of Germany into such a fury, that one must regard
it as a sort of security if he be not killed at once." 2

The peasants tried to justify their cruel and van-
dalic destruction of life and property by appealing
to the Gospel as interpreted by Luther's doctrine ;
and they claimed to be the most zealous defenders
of this. But the Wittenberg monk, not being par
ticularly desirous of shining as the instigator of such
a riotous revolt, printed a reply to their manifesto.
In this he attempted to cast the disgrace of having
caused the rebellion upon his enemies, whom he
styled "the prophets of murder."

At this time he sincerely wished to crush the in
surrection, but his writings against it only added fuel
to the fire. He accused the bishops and priests of
having caused it, and threatened them with God's
wrath because they were blind to the light of his
Gospel. He adviced the princes to deal mildly with
the rebels. " It is true," he said, "that the princes
who oppose the preaching of the gospel and oppress
the people, deserve dethronement." At the same
time he requested the peasants not to use the name
of Christianity as " a cover for their impatient, un-

1 Contra M. Lutherum, Fol. 19.

a Stintzing. Ulrich Zasius, Basel, 1857. See 263-267.

» Swwtfliche Wtrke, 24, 257-286,

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 59

peaceable, unchristian conduct." "No more tithes!
you exclaim," he says ; " by what right do you take
them from their lawful possessors ? It is to convert
them to charitable purposes. But ought you to be
so liberal with what is not your own ? You wish to
free yourselves from slavery ; but slavery is as old
as the world. The abolition of slavery would be
directly against the Gospel." l Thus he flattered
and deluded the poor peasants whom he himself had
seduced into open rebellion.

"When Luther," writes Osiander, 2 "saw the
peasants attacking not only the bishops and
clergy, but also his teaching and the princes, he
preached the slaughter of the rebels like that of wild
beasts." Erasmus in his ' Hyperaspistes' addresses
the reformer in this way : " It is no account that in
your cruel manifesto against the peasants you re
pudiate all ideas of rebellion ; your books, written in
German, are at hand, wherein you preached against
the bishops and monks and thus gave occasion to
these tumults."

In the meantime the peasants continued in their
rage and fury. They devastated thousands of
churches and burned down innumerable monasteries
and seats of learning. They destroyed libraries and
manuscripts which had been for centuries the pride
of scholars, and the memorials of industrious monks.
Mutian, the humanist, in a letter which he wrote to
the Elector of Saxony on Apr. 2/th, 1525, gives a
sad description of the outrages which were being
daily perpetrated. "My Lord and King," he writes,

1 SammtHche Werke, £ fi.
f Cap. 103.

60 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

umy soul is sad unto death. Violently, cruelly and
inhumanly the rough troop of peasants destroys
and devastates God's temples without fearing the
Almighty. It is pitiful to see so many nuns and
monks roving about without shelter or support,
driven away from their sacred dwellings by sacri
legious bands. Miserable and in want, I am forced
to beg my bread in my old age." l

Luther now saw clearly the progress of the re
bellion and the enormity of the crimes which were
being committed under the sanction of his new
Gospel. He at once changed the tone of his writ
ings, and became from a liberator of the oppressed
an apostle of despotism, the most cruel and satanic
adviser of the princes against the peasantry. His
book against " those pillaging and murdering peas
ants" is so rabid and bitter that it seems the work
of a demon rather than that of a man. He calls the
peasants " faithless, treacherous, lying, disobedient
boobies and rascals," who have deserved the death
of soul and body. A rebel is under the ban of God
and the emperor, and " he, who strangles him first,
does right well." " Strike ! slay front and rear !
For nothing is more poisonous, pernicious, devilish
than a rebel. It is a mad dog that bites you if you
do not destroy it." Every magistracy, that does
not punish " with murder and bloodshed," is guilty
of all murders and evils committed ; there can be
" no place for patience and mercy ; " " it is the time of
the sword and v rath, and not the time of grace."
"The peasants have bad consciences and are de
fending a wro'ig cause; and every peasant killed

1 Tetzel, Suppl. epp. Mutiani 75-78. Jcnae 1701.

DR. MARTIN* LUTHER. 6l

for it is lost, soul and body, and is the devil's own
forever. So wondrous are the times now that a
prince can win heaven with blood more easily than
others can with prayer." " Prick ! Strike ! Strangle,
whosoever is able to ! Well for thee, if thou shouldst
die doing so ; for a happier death thou couldst not
obtain."1

Luther's writings at this time aroused the indig
nation even of his disciples. Some of them main
tained that, as the spirit had once left Saul, so it had
departed from their master.2 But Luther excused
his ferocious bitterness by saying that he was com
manded directly by God to write as he had written,
and reproached his accusers with making common
cause with the rebels. He wrote to Caspar Miiller,
the chancellor of Mansfield : " Those, who chide
my little book, should keep their mouths closed and
be careful, for they are surely rebellious in their
hearts. For he, who sides with the rebellious, gives
us sufficiently to understand that if he had time and
space, he would do evil just as he has resolved it in
his heart. A rebel does not deserve to be treated
with reason ; we must answer him with the fist till
his nose bleads and his head flies in the air. The
peasants would not hear me ; we must open their
ears by means of the musket To the one who
calls me unkind and unmerciful, I answer this :
merciful or unmerciful, we are now speaking about
God's Word, which demands the honor of the king
and the destruction of the rebel." " What I teach
and write," he added, "shall remain although the

* Sammtliche Werke, 24. 288-294.

• De Wette a, 67.

62 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

whole world should burst.* l The Reformer after
wards boasted that he was the cause of all the blood
shed in the peasants' war : " I, Martin Luther,
have slain all the peasants in the insurrection be
cause I commanded them to be killed ; their blood
is upon my head. But I put it upon the Lord God,
by whose command I spoke." 2

"A wise man," wrote Luther to John Ruhel,
"gives to the ass food, a pack-saddle and the whip;
to the peasant oat-straw. If they are not content,
give them the cudgel and the carbine; it is their
due. Let us pray that they may be obedient; if
not, show them no mercy. Make the musket whistle
among them, or else they will be a thousand times
more wicked. "3 The armies of the German princes
followed these instructions with the most merciless
activity. The battle of Frankenhausen was fought
on May i$th, 1525, and the peasant forces were
literally annihilated.

Germany at this time presented a most dismal
appearance, especially in those districts where the
war had raged. Over one thousand convents and
castles lay in ashes: hundreds of hamlets had been
burned to the ground ; the fields were uncultivated,
the ploughing utensils stolen, the cattle slaughtered
or carried away. The widows and orphans of more
than one hundred and fifty thousand4 slain peas
ants were living in the deepest misery. The vestiges
of this wholesale devastation may be seen in Ger-

i SUmmtliche Werke, 24, 295-319.

a S&nmtliche Werke, 59, 284-285.

» De Wette 2, 669.

4 Geissel, Kaiserdom. Cain 1876, p 315, Note I.

DR. MAR TIN L UTHER. 63

many even to this day. "We are now gathering the
fruits of your preaching," Erasmus wrote to Luther.
" You disclaim any connection with the insurgents,
while they regard you as the author and expounder
of their principles. It is well known that persons,
who have God's Word constantly in their mouth,
have stirred up the most frightful insurrections."1

Luther at this time needed the protection of the
princes very badly, for naturally he was execrated
by the people whom he had so shamefully deceived.
He sought to obtain this protection by flattering
them and preaching the blindest obedience to their
commands. "The Scripture," he wrote in 1526,
" calls magistrates by a parable executioners, driv
ers, solicitors. As drivers of asses have to urge
them on and compel them with the lash, so magis
trates in order to check the people must goad, beat,
strangle, hang, burn, behead and mutilate them."2
This spirit of servility and depotism grew stronger
in him as his years increased. In 1527 he went so
far as to advocate slavery as it once existed among
the Jews. He did not believe at all in the efficacy
of moral persuasion: " Nobody can check the people
except by the constraint of an exterior regimen. " 3

"I am angry," he wrote in 1529, "with the peas
ants, who wish to govern themselves and fail to
realize their happiness in dwelling peacefully under
the protection of the princes. Oh ! ye powerless,
rude peasants and asses, who will not perceive it !
May the thunder strike you dead ! " * Henry of

i Eras mi Hyper aspistes, I, 1032.
a Sammtliche Werke, 15, 276.
Sdmmtliche Werke, 33, 389.
« Sfynmtliche Werke% 36, 175.

64 -M. MARTIN LUTHER.

Einsiedel, a nobleman whose conscience was
troubled about the many socages by which his serfs
were oppressed, once asked counsel in the matter
from Luther. He received the following reply: " To
do service in socage is a penalty imposed upon people
for crimes committed; no one should have scruples
about it. It would not be good to drop and abolish
the right of doing service in socage ; because the
common man must be laden with burden, or else he
becomes petulant."1 Scherr, a great enemy of the
Catholic Church, called Luther the real inventor of
the doctrine of blind and unconditional obedience
to magistrates. The reformer preached: " Your
reason tells you that two and five make seven; but
should the magistrates say that two and five make
eight, you would have to believe it against your
knowledge and reason. " This slavish doctrine natur
ally was very acceptable to many of the German
princes.

Bensen, a Protestant author, remarks very truly :
" While the Catholic Church has never, at least in
theory, sanctioned the oppression practised by pre
lates and nobles and has ever defended, sometimes
successfully but always obstinately, the right of in
dividuals and nations against even emperors them
selves ; the evangelical reformers are justly re
proached with having been the first to teach and
preach to the Germans the doctrine of servile sub
mission and the right of the stronger". These
words find an illustration even at the present day in
Protestant Prussia under Pope "William I. and Car
dinal von Bismarck.

Kapp, NsuhUM* I, 281.

XIII.

" LUTHER celebrated the funeral of the slain peas
ants by marrying a nun." l He wrote to Rtihel on
June 1 5th, 1525: "To make the mad and stupid
peasants still more mad and stupid I got married ".
Another end which he had in view when he took
this sacrilegious step was, as he says himself, " to
encourage the Cardinal Elector of Mentz, who could
hardly hesitate to follow so illustrious an example ".
His chosen one was Catharine Bora, a nun of the
Nimptschen convent who had been carried off from
the cloister by a young citizen of Torgau named
Bernard Koppe. The marriage was celebrated
secretly on June I3th, 1525. Eighteen years before
the pious " Reformer" had of his own free will
solemnly promised in the convent chapel at Erfurt
to observe perpetual chastity in order to devote him
self unreservedly to God.

The marriage was so sudden and so little expected
by his friends, that they were greatly surprised and
disquieted by it. But Luther blasphemously called
it the result of a divine inspiration : " The Lord has
suddenly and wonderfully thrown (conjecif) me into
marriage with that nun, Catharine Bora."2 He
seemed to feel the depth and extent of his sacrilege
even at the time of the ceremony ; for only three

1 Osiander, Cent. 104, p. 100.

2 De Wette, 3, 1.

66 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

days afterwards he wrote to Spalatinus : " By this
marriage I have made myself so vile and contempt
ible, as to make all the devils laugh and all the
angels weep ". l Justus Jonas, a friend of Luther,
wrote about this time to Spalatinus : " Our Luther
has married Catharina Bora. Yesterday I was pres
ent at the marriage. I could not refrain from tears
at the sight ; I do not know why ". 2

Luther's enemies, however, far from shedding tears,
had a hearty laugh at his expense, and thus verified
the prophetic words of Erasmus : " If ever this monk
takes a wife, the whole world and the devil himself
will laugh". Luther's choice was hardly a happy
one. Catharine's disposition was very disagreeable.
She was haughty and imperious in the extreme and
gave her husband much vexation and trouble.

Erasmus in a letter about that time expressed the
feelings of a great many evangelicals. "It was
thought," he says, "that Luther was the hero of a
tragedy ; but, for my own part, I regard him as
playing the chief part in a comedy, which has ended,
as every comedy ends, in a marriage."3

Henry VIII of England did not join in the
laughter of his contemporaries, but hurled at the
married monk a storm of invectives : "You may well
be ashamed to raise your eyes to me. But I wonder
how you can raise your eyes to God or look at any
honest man, when you, an Augustinian monk, at
the instigation of the devil, the suggestions of the
flesh and the emptiness of your own understanding

i Seek Lib., p. 16.

8 Spalatini, Ann., Menken, 2, 645.

8 Alzog's History.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. fy

have not been ashamed to violate, with your sacri
legious embraces, a virgin devoted to the Lord.
Such an act in Pagan Rome would have caused the
vestal to be buried alive and you to be stoned to
death. But this is a greater offence. You have con
tracted an incestuous marriage with this nun, whom
you parade publicly to the confusion of morality, in
contempt of the holy laws of marriage and those
vows of continence at which you laugh with so much
effrontery. Abomination ! When you ought to be
sinking with shame and endeavoring to make re
paration, you, wretched man, glory in your crime
and, instead of asking pardon, carry your head high
and excite other monks to imitate your infamous
conduct."1

1 Audin's Life of Luther, II, 229.

XIV.

HENRY VIII was one of Luther's most important
and most fearless adversaries. Assisted by John
Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, and other learned pre
dates, he wrote his book, "Defense of the Seven
Sacraments Against Doctor Martin Luther," in
which he skillfully refuted the Reformer s new doc
trines on confession, indulgences, the papacy, etc.
and dexterously exposed the numerous contra
dictions in his writings. By this work the English
king obtained from Rome the title of Defender of the
Faith, (De fens or Ft dei), — a title to which Queen
Victoria still clings with pride. Luther answered in
his usual vulgar and indecent style, vomiting forth
all the vile epithets he could find. He called the
king "a crowned ass, a liar, a varlet, an idiot, a
swine of the Thomist herd."

"Thou art a blasphemer," he exclaimed, "not a
king. Thou hast a royal jawbone, nothing more ;
Henry, thou art a fool." Again he said : "It is the
work of God, who blinds him so that through me his
rascality may be shown up." * This abusive language
imbittered Henry so intensely, that he used even his
political influence against the apostate monk.

The hypocrisy of which Luther was capable is
nowhere more plainly evident than in his dealings
with Henry VIII. While he had nothing to gain

» Sammtliche Werke, 28, 343.

6$

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 69

from that monarch, he treated him with the utmost
independence and contempt. But afterwards, when
Henry was about to separate himself from the
Church for the sake of a woman, Luther saw the
advantages he might reap by securing so important
a convert to his new Gospel, and immediately became
a most abject and servile flatterer. "I should indeed
fear to address Your Majesty," he wrote to the king,
"when I remember how I insulted you in the pam
phlet which I, a proud and vain man, yielding to evil
advisers and not to my own inclination, published
against you. I hardly dare lift my eyes to you ; I,
a worm of dust and rottenness deserving merely
contempt and disdain, who have not feared to insult
so great a prince. Humbly prostrate at your feet, I
pray and beseech you to pardon my offences etc.
etc." l In this affair Luther had miscalculated.
The letter, which he thought would be an accept
able peace-offering to the angry king, became one
of the deepest disgraces of his disgraceful life ; for
Henry exposed the Reformer's duplicity and covered
him with the scorn and derision of the learned
world.

Luther, never weary of writing, published on New-
Year's Day, 1526, another very passionate libel
against pope, bishops and priests. He called them
"the locusts, caterpillars, bugs and pernicious
worms that devour and corrupt the whole country".
One should not cease to ridicule and abuse the
papacy and the clergy until they be entirely de
stroyed. In prose and in poetry, in music and in
painting the devilish existence of this idolatry

i DC Wette, vol. III.

/O DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

should be attacked. " Unhappy", he exclaimed,
"is he who is slothful in this, as he knows that he
renders a service to God when he has resolved and
begun to crush this horror and turn it into dust ". l
In the same year he said of those that were true to
the old faith: "Nobody can be a papist if he be not
at least a murderer, a robber and a persecutor ". 2
In this way he tried to rekindle against the
Church the expiring fervor of his disciples.

1 Sammtliche Werke, 29, 377.
a Sammtliche Werket 65.

XV.

AFTER having abolished all episcopal jurisdiction,
Luther saw clearly that his new church needed some
organization. He therefore placed the administra
tion of its affairs into the hands of the princes and
laity. Only with the assistance of the civil power
could the ' Gospel' strike root in a country once so
thoroughly religious. The princes, who took an
active part in the reform movement, became de
fenders of the Gospel through pecuniary motives, as
the Reformer himself bears witness: "Many are
Evangelicals because there are still Catholic re
monstrances and church-property".1 Besides, to
wanton princes, whose private lives would not bear
the light of day, the easy doctrine of Wittenberg
was much better suited than the stern teaching of
the Crucified.

Luther was at this time eager to win to his cause,
with flattering words, the man whom he had so
often and so basely vilified, Duke George of Saxony;
but that true nobleman spurned his advances with
the memorable words: " Keep your Gospel; I keep
mine, which the Church of Christ has received and
given to me".2 In October, 1526, Philip, Land
grave of Hesse, presided at the first Lutheran synod,
which he himself had convoked at Hamburg. This

1 Menzel, Tom. I, 371.

1 Luther's Works, Leipsic, 19, 361.

J2 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

synod gave each congregation the full control of
its own ecclesiastical discipline. In Electoral Sax
ony Luther's suggested system of parochial Visita
tion was adopted by John the Constant. A com
mission, composed of theologians and jurists, clerics
and laymen, was appointed to visit the parishes and
watch the propagation of the new Gospel. In this
way the Lutheran Church, partly the outgrowth of
civil power, became the tool of the reigning princes
and the slave of the state, which it remains to the
present day. The " Visitors" found that but few
congregations desired a change in the sense in
tended by the reformers. They expressed their
opinion that for the future the Prince Elector should
appoint and discharge all pastors, and they warmly
recommended the reestablishment of schools in the
towns and villages.

But the confusion increased daily. Luther wrote
to John the Constant on Nov. 22nd, 1526 : " There
is no end to the lamentations of the preachers in all
places ; the peasants give simply nothing and there
is such an ingratitude among the people towards the
holy Word of God, that God undoubtedly will send a
great plague upon them. And if I knew how to do
it with a good conscience, I would prevent them
from having any pastors or preachers and let them
live like swine, as they do anyhow. There is no
longer either fear or love of God, because the pope's
excommunication is abolished and each does what
he likes. But as it is the duty of us all, chiefly of
the magistracy, to train the poor youth and to keep
them in the fear of God and in discipline, we must
have schools and teachers and pastors. The parents.

DA. MARTIN LUTHER. 73

if they do not wish this, may go to the devil." He
then goes on to urge the prince, "as supreme head
since the fall of the papal and clerical ordinations,
to regulate such things ; for nobody else can do it.
Where there is a city or town which has the means
to do so, they should be compelled by Your Electo
ral Grace to found schools, chairs of theology and
parishes. Those, who do not wish to do so, shall be
forced by you to do it, as they are bound to make
bridges, cross-pieces and highways. But have they
not the means, or are they heavily taxed other
wise, the property of the monasteries, originally
intended for such a purpose, must be used in order
to spare the poor man. A bad cry will be raised if
the schools and presbyteries be allowed to fall and
the nobility appropriate the treasures of the mona
steries, as some do." 1

A letter which Luther wrote on November 22d,
1526, gives clear evidence that in Saxony at that
time there was no real adherence, no spirit of sacri
fice, no enthusiasm whatever among the people for
the new teachings. In another letter, addressed to
the Prince Elector, February 3d, 1527, the Reformer
describes the pitiful condition of the preachers. " I
console them," he said, "with the future visitations.
They have nothing and walk about and look like
dried ghosts." 2

Melanchthon composed for the parochial visitations
his " Formulary or Book of Visitation," in which he
gave a short exposition of the reformed faith, less
harsh than Luther's doctrine, and practical instruc-

i De Wette, 3, 135-137.
s D« Wette, 3, 160.

74 'DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

tions about preaching. Luther was quite pleased
with this book, "for it was so simply put down for
the mob." In regard to the last supper, however,
and the reviling of pope and bishops, of which
manner 01 preaching Melanchton disapproved,
Luther made some additional remarks : " The
preachers shall directly and openly proclaim the
doctrine of both forms before everybody, be he weak,
strong or stubborn ; they also shall violently con
demn the papacy and its party, since God has already
condemned it as the devil and his kingdom."1 "We
must," he said in the following year when interpret
ing the fifth book of Moses, " curse and revile the
pope and his kingdom and not keep the mouth closed,
but preach against it without ceasing. Some say we
can do nothing else but condemn and abuse the
pope and his own. This cannot be otherwise ; for as
soon as you forget the error, the grace of God will
be forgotten and the inborn grace despised." 2

A new order of Divine service, projected by
Luther, was introduced into Saxony by the com
mand of the Prince Elector, as the basis of Lutheran
worship. To avoid scandalizing the people, many
parts of the Catholic worship were retained in the
reformed churches. Chief among these was the
holy sacrifice of the mass. Not of his own accord,
but forced by others, especially by the civil power
and, as he said himself, "for the sake of the simple-
minded laity, " Luther introduced a 'German' mass
instead of the 'Latin' one. "The mass, " he said on
October I4th, 1526. ''is the principal service or-

* SUmmtHche Werke, 23, 57.

* Sammtliche Werke, 36, 410.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. f$

dained for the consolation of true Christians. " He
did not exactly know whether the new German
mass were pleasing to God; "therefore," he said,
"I have fought for a longtime against a German
mass ; but now, as so many ask me for it by writings
and letters and as the civil power forces me, I have
no excuse, but must regard it as the will of God."1
Thus mass was said on Sundays, as in former times,
by priests in sacred vestments, on altars which sup
ported lighted candles of wax; and the ceremonies
and chants which accompanied the sacrifice, were but
slightly different from those of the old Roman rit
ual.2 Even in after years Luther rejoiced at the
fact that in churches of his creed but little change
had been made in the ceremonies and that mass,
choir, organ, bells and chasubles were retained ; so
that laymen and foreigners, who did not understand
the sermon, would say: "This is a real papistical
church."3 In his service, however, he omitted the
essential part of the Catholic mass, the Canon; but
the common people were not allowed to learn this;
for, as Melanchthon said, "they so adhered to the
mass that nobody could take it from them."* Thus
the people could not perceive the depth of the
chasm that separated the new worship from the old.
Luther complained bitterly of the "unspeakable
contempt the people showed towards the preachers
of the new Gospel. The people take from them
corn, oats, barley and whatever they want. The

i Sammtlichc Werke, 14, 278.
8 Corp. Reform, I, 991.
8 Sftmmtliche Werke, 28» 304.
4 Corp. Reform, I, 842,

76 ~~J5£ MARTTft

peasants In towns complain of it, when they have to
put up a fence for their pastor; nay, they force him
to herd cows and hogs like other peasants. " l "Our
Evangelicals, " he says in another place, " are seven
times worse than before. Since our devil has been
expelled from us, seven stronger devils have entered,
as we see in the actions of princes, lords, noblemen,
citizens and peasants."2 Some time after this he
remarked : "Citizens and peasants, men and women,
children and servants, all are of the devil. " He
even sorrowfully stated, as any Protestant minister
in Berlin might state at the present day: "One tenth
part refuses baptism. " When he learned that in
Wiirtemberg they had abolished the mass, he ex
claimed : " This is what Satan intended to do when
he attacked this Sacrament : namely to abolish it
entirely and to root out Christ. The devil, thus far
advanced, will not rest until things grow worse. " 3

Religious schism and confusion were becoming
more general from year to year. According to
Luther's grand principle everybody was taught in-
inwardly by God himself, and was his own judge in
matters of faith. Thus, but a few years after the
proclamation of this principle, we find Lutherans,
Carlstadtians, Bucerians, Zwinglians, Anabaptists
and other sects, all, like the Protestants of the pres
ent, differing among themselves but united in one
common hatred against Rome.

Luther was seriously alarmed at this disorder in
the camp. " Under one magistracy ", he wrote,

e Werke, 6, 182, et seq.
» Sammtliche Werke, 36, 411.
» De Wette, 3, 453-454-

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 7/

"if it can be done, discording doctrine should not be
tolerated, but further dirt should be avoided. And
though people do not believe, yet for the sake of
the ten commandments they ought to be driven to
the sermon, so that they may learn at least the ex
terior work of obedience ". 1

De Wette, III, 498.

XVI.

To stop the propagation of the new gospel Ferdi
nand, brother of Charles V., convoked a diet at
Spire in 1529. Here the majority of States decreed
that the Lutherans should abstain from all further
innovations until the assembling of an ecumenical
council, and that the ministers of the Church should
preach the Gospel according to the Church's inter--
pretation. But the Lutheran princes solemnly pro
tested against this ; "whence", says Alzog, "their
name, * Protestants ', which they have ever since
retained ; and their only bond of unity from that
day to this has been a common protest against the
Catholic Church."

The real disunion of the German nation may be
dated from this diet at Spire, where the Lutheran
princes appeared publicly as a decided faction. Mel-
anchthon foresaw with terror the bad consequences
to Church and State which would be effected by
such a dissension. " I was so terrified ", he wrote
shortly after his return from Spire, "that during the
first days I felt as if dead ; all the torments of hell
seemed to oppress me. It is a great affair and full
of peril. There is danger that out of these begin
nings an overthrow will follow in the empire ; and
not only the empire is in peril, but religion also." 1

Zwinglius, the reforming apostle of Switzerland,

Corp. Reform., I, 1068-1070.

78

DR. MAR TIN L UTHER. ?g

rejected the dogma of Christ's real presence in the
Holy Eucharist. Luther was enraged against his
dissenting Swiss brother. He declared that Zwing-
lius had lost Christ ; that his books should be
avoided like the poison of Satan ; that his art con
sisted in talking and weeping much, in answering
and understanding nothing. " We for our part ", he
said, " maintain that according to the words of
Christ his true body and blood are there. Our ad
versary says there is mere bread and wine. One
party must be of the devil and God's enemy ; there
is no escape ". He had no hope of ever converting
Zwinglius : "It is unheard of that one who invented
a false doctrine was ever converted ; for Christ him
self could not convert a high-priest, but his dis
ciples ". In October, 1525, Luther had written : " I
shall ever regard those who deny the real presence
as outside of the faith". He also said " he had often
experienced that Christ was present ; because he
had had terrible visions. He had often seen angels;
so that he was forced to abstain from mass ".

Landgrave Philip, desiring to effect a reconcili
ation between Luther and Zwinglius, invited the
two champions to Marburg for Oct. ist, 1529. They
went thither ; but the disputation, instead of recon
ciling them, only separated them the more. Luther
on this occasion made the following remarkable con
fession : " We must acknowledge that in the papacy
are the truths of salvation, which we have inherited.
We, moreover, acknowledge that in the papacy we
find the true Scripture, the true baptism, the true
sacrament of the altar, the true keys for the remis
sion of sins, the true office of preaching, the true

80 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

catechism which contains the Lord's Prayer, the ten
commandments, the articles of faith. I say that in
the papacy we find the true Christianity, the true
essence of Christianity".1

Zwinglius besought Luther not to refuse the
Sacramentarians as brethern, " for we wish to die in
the Communion of Wittenberg". But Luther ob
stinately answered: "No, no; cursed be such alli
ance, which would endanger the cause of God and
men's souls. Begone ! You are possessed by an
other spirit than ours".2 "The Zwinglians ", he
exclaimed, "are a set of diabolical fanatics; they
have a legion of devils in their hearts and are wholly
in their power". On another occasion, however, he
had given the reason why Zwinglius and his friends
did not understand the Sacred Scriptures: "because
they never have had the devil for their adversary.
For when we have not the devil tied to our neck,
we are but speculative theologians ". Zwinglius
returned the compliment by seriously declaring
that t( Luther was not possessed by one evil spirit,
but occupied by a legion of devils".

In June, 1530, Charles V. returned to Germany
after an absence of nine years. He immediately
repaired to the great diet at Augsburg. On June
24th the papal legate, Campeggio, exhorted the
States in a mild and conciliatory manner not to
separate themselves from the Catholic Church, to
which all other Christian kings and powers were
subject.

At the emperor's request, the Protestants laid be-

1 Op. Luth. Jenae, Germ, fol., 408, 409.
8 Erasmi £#ist. ad Cochlaeun:.

DR. MARTM LUTHER. l

fore his majesty a written profession of their faith.
This document had been drawn up and recon
structed, changed and rechanged, with tears and
sighs, by the mild Melanchthon and met the full ap
proval of his Master, Martin Luther. Melanchthon
tried to cloak with insidious language Luther's gross
and heretical principles; but, as Alzog says, " with
all his care and skill he could not clothe error in
the vesture of truth".

This confession was read before the States in the
Diet and then handed over for examination to a
committee of learned Catholic theologians, includ
ing Eck, Wimpina, Cochlaeus, John Faber and
others. Calmly and dispassionately they discussed
the Confession in the light of Catholic truth; their
answer is called the " Confutation of the Augsburg
Confession ". The emperor now commanded the
Protestant princes to renounce their error and re
turn to the faith of Christ, and " should you refuse",
he said, "we shall regard it a conscientious duty to
proceed as our coronation oath and our office re
quire ". But when the gentlehearted Charles, — 01
whom even Luther wrote in that same year: " It is
wonderful how fervently all love the emperor " — ,
saw the displeasure which his declaration had
caused among " rotestant princes, he consented that
Protestant and Catholic commissions, each com
posed of an equal number of theologians and jurists,
should dispute on religious questions in his presence,
It was certainly sheer folly to try to bring about a
reconciliation in this way; for the Lutherans were
constantly shifting ground and at times even main
taining, or pretending to maintain Catholic doctrines

82 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

On July 6th, Melanchthon wrote to the papal le
gate : " We have no dogma which differs from the
doctrines of the Roman Church. We are ready to
obey the Church, if according to her clemency,
which she has shown at all times to all peoples, she
overlook silently certain matters of trivial im
portance or forgive what, though we wish it, we
cannot mend. We honor with reverence the Pope
of Rome and the whole constitution of the Church,
if the pope only does not repel us. We are hated in
Germany because we are defending with the great
est constancy the doctrines of the Roman Church. We
shall show this faithfulness to Christ and the Roman
Church unto the last breath of life, even when you
should refuse to receive us in grace."1 On the very
same day, his Master wrote in a Commentary on the
Second Psalm, dedicated to the Archbishop of
Mentz : " I beseech you, Lords, take care and do
not imagine that you are dealing with men, if you
be dealing with the pope and his own, but with real
devils."2 Five weeks later, Melanchthon himself
called the pope "an Antichrist," under whom one is
treated " as the Jews under Pharao in Egypt." 3

Luther was under the ban of the empire, and could
not appear in Augsburg to participate in the diet.
But from his residence, at Coburg, he exercised a
strong influence on the Protestant States and their
theologians, who were continually consulting him.
He would not hear of any reconciliation with the
papists, and thought a union of doctrine impossible

* Corp. Rtfcrm.. 2, 169-171.

• Sammtlicht Werkt, 54, 167-168.
f Corp. Reiorm., 3, 2*4.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 8$

" as long as the pope would not give up the pap
acy." 1 He grew so uneasy about the transactions of
his friends at the diet, that he wrote to Augsburg,
on September 2Oth, 1530: " I am nearly bursting
of anger and repugnance, and I pray you to cut
short the affair, to cease negotiating and return
home."2 He threatened the "vengeance of the
devil" upon any of his friends, who should yield any
thing to the papacy. He exhorted them to per
severe in their obstinacy, and he wrote to Melanch-
thon : " After once having escaped violence and
obtained peace, we shall correct our tricks and mis
takes." 3

The marriages of nuns and priests, according to
the canons, were declared null and void by the
diet, and pernicious to the cause of religion, " since
people," as John Faber wrote, " can have no respect
for married priests." Luther himself had to con
fess : " Nothing good can be found in ministers of
the church who are married ; they are despised and
rejected, and have beome a curse, a purgatory, the
scorn and contempt of all people." ' Even the
jurists of the Lutheran party at Wittenberg, in their
public lectures, declared the marriages of priests
invalid, and their children illegitimate and incap
able of inheriting the property of their parents. " Up
to this time," Luther said complainingly, " I cannot
find a jurist who will take my part ; they refuse to
acknowledge any legitimacy for my children ; " and,

* De Wette, 4. 144.
» De Wette, 4, 170.

• De Wette, 4, 156.

« DOllinger's Rej'ortn&iio*, I, 288.

84 JW?- MAR TIN L UTHER.

being encouraged by his so-called wife, he informed
jurists in general that they were "impious and
proud rascals, whose tongues should be torn out of
their throats " for pointing out the old law of Church
and State. l

The princes of the new Gospel regarded intoler
ance against Catholics as a duty of conscience.
With the words 'conscience' and 'Gospel' they
sought to cover every proceeding against human or
divine law. Thus, when the emperor emphatically
demanded the restitution of all the church-property
which they had stolen and taken possession of, they
refused to obey his command, denying that it was a
duty of 'conscience' in this case to make restitution,
notwithstanding the fact that it is and always was
against the divine word and against all papal and
secular rights to take the property of another.
Luther seemed to have felt differently from his dis
ciples, for he wrote to Spalatinus : "This is a very
serious question, the spoliation of the monasteries.
Believe me, the affair torments me vehemently." 2
After reading, however, the inflammatory exhorta
tions, in which he so strongly advised their de
struction, we may be allowed the privilege, which
we have so often before had occasion to use, of
doubting the Reformer's truthfulness.

» -Sammlliche Werke, 62, 238, 254.
* De Wette 3, 147.

XVII.

All the negotiation and controversy failed to bring
about a reconciliation. On September 22nd the em
peror issued an edict in which he declared that the
"Protestants had been refuted by sound and un
answerable arguments drawn from Holy Scripture ;
but in order to preserve peace and unity in the empire
he granted them, until April I5th, 1531, to consider
the matter and make up their minds to return to the
faith of their fathers.

The Protestant princes, filled with anxiety and
consternation on account of the determined attitude
which the emperor had taken, entered into an alli
ance at Schmalkald and resolved to take up arms
for the maintenance of Protestantism. They even
negotiated with France, England and other powers
against the emperor. A civil war would have been
unavoidable, had not the danger of a Turkish inva
sion forced the emperor to make peace with the
Schmalkaldians, who refused to assist him in repelling
the Turks. In this dire necessity, therefore, the
emperor promised at Niirnberg (1532) that until the
assembling of a general council no action should be
taken against the Protestant princes.

One might suppose that Luther would finally
grow weary of his continual war and rage against
the papacy and everything connected with it, especi
ally when he saw the frightful confusion and

85

86 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

havoc which the propagation of his doctrine had
caused in his once so united and glorious fatherland;
but history proves the contrary. His fury against
the divinely established Church increased with his
years. " The peace," he said, " which is bought by
detriment to Gospel and faith, is to be banished into
hell." His 'Gospel', as we have learned, was "justi
fication by faith alone" and the "slavery of the
human will"; this must be preached at the cost of
everything else. "It is terrible", he exclaimed, "but
it cannot be otherwise. They say that when the
pope falls, Germany will perish and be wrecked.
What can I do ? I cannot preserve it. Whose fault
is it ? It is a common cry : 'If the Gospel had not
been preached, everything would be peaceful': No,
my fellow. It shall come never." 1

At the request of the notorious Landgrave Philip,
Luther published his "Warning to my Dear Germans
Against the Decrees of Augsburg" and his "Com
ments on the Imperial Edict." In these he ana
thematized the Catholics and gave vent once more
to his burning 'Gospel zeal'. "Oh ! Infamous Diet",
he tragically exclaimed, "such as never was held nor
heard of and such as never will be held nor heard
of; such as will cover with infamy the princes and
the whole nation and make all Germans blush before
God and men. Who under heaven will henceforth
fear or respect the Germans, when they know that
we have permitted ourselves to be insulted, ridiculed,
treated as children, as stocks, as stones by the
cursed pope and his gang." He takes occasion in
this pamphlet to inform us once more that the Vicar

i Stonmtliche Werke% 46, 226-229, and 48, 342.

DR. MAR TIN L UTHER. 87

of Christ is identical with Satan and that his adhe
rents are "obdurate blasphemers, murderers of souls,
rascals, pope's asses, living devils"; and he concludes
with these terrible words : "The blasphemous pa
pacy and whatever is connected with it, begone to
the bottom of hell, as John announces in the
Apocalypse ! Amen. Let everyone, who professes
to be a good Christian, say amen." l

There was a time when Luther was one of the
most popular men in all Germany. There had been
growing among the people a common desire for a
reform of certain abuses which had crept into the
Church's discipline. These abuses were not doctrinal
nor could they affect in the least the divine constitu
tion or nature of the Church ; and while the Witten
berg monk pretended to confine himself to the cor
rection of these abuses and scandals, he was hailed
as a reformer. But the people never dreamed of a
separation from the Church nor of the creation of
sects ; and when Luther began to preach Open re
bellion against lawful authority and, after the failure
of the rebellion which he had caused, advised the
slaughter of the rebels, he naturally became an object
of execration to both nobles and peasants. A few
princes only, whose guilty consciences were better
soothed by the lax morals of the Wittenberg Gospel
than by the strict law of the ancient Church, and who
were greedy for the treasures of monasteries and
convents, remained staunch patrons of the apostate
monk and his doctrine. The poor man, who had to
choose between accepting the Lutheran creed enforc
ed by his sovereign and quitting his country with

1 S&mmtliche Werket 25, I et seq.

88 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

wife and children, was naturally opposed to the new
doctrine and longed for the "horrors of the papacy."

A few months before the opening of the Diet of
Augsburg, Luther's father fell dangerously ill at
Mansfield. Luther was much concerned about it
and sought to console him with a letter ; he would
not venture to visit him, as he feared that the people
might slay him on the journey. "I would like ex
ceedingly," he writes, " to come to you in person ;
but my good friends advise me not to tempt God by
risking the journey, for you know how I am beloved
by the nobles and and the peasantry. I might come
to you, but there is danger in returning." * Two
years before this Melanchthon had written to a friend:
" We see how the people hate us." 2

The attachment of the people to Luther's doctrine
was no stronger than their attachment to the apos
tate himself. During the year preceding the Diet
of Augsburg he wrote : " They now say the monks
sang and prayed much and fasted, and all for the
honor and glory of God ; which pleased the common
man ". "They accuse me of being a rebel, of sunder
ing the unity of the Church ; and whatever of evil
is done, they say, is done on my account ". " For
merly under the papacy, they cry, things were not
so bad ; but now, since these teachers come, every
misfortune befalls us, hard times, war and the Turks ".
" Many say peace is broken, the world is in trouble,
men are confused in mind and heart, religion is de
caying, the divine worship is disturbed, lawful obe
dience abrogated; what good came from the Gospel?

i DeWette 3, 550.

» Corp. Reform. I, 941. 3

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 89

Formerly everything was better ". Shortly after
the close of the diet Luther said : " Everybody now
complains and cries that the Gospel causes much
discord, controversy and disorder in the world ; and
since it arose, things are worse than in former times
when all went on smoothly, and when there was no
persecution, and people lived together as good friends
and neighbors". "People", he said, "would like
to drive him out of the country and starve him".
They were still so much attached to the old Church
that Luther declared : " If I wished, I could easily
with two or three sermons make my people turn
back to the papacy and cause new pilgrimages and
masses ". " I know, in truth, that there are scarcely
ten in Wittenberg whom I could not seduce, if I
would again use such holiness as I used when a monk
under the papacy ". 1

The princes, to whom the reformer had entrusted
the church government and who disposed of the
church property, were the only ones who protected
the new doctrine and granted lodgings to its preach
ers. Luther confesses that, though the Protestant
princes were kind and generous to the teachers of
the new doctrine, yet the nobles, citizens and peas
ants had only contempt and hatred for them and
" would, if it were in their power, have expelled
them long ago from their lodgings ". " Only for the
princes and nobles ", he said again, " we should not
remain long. Let us pray for the Prince Elector,
that he may preserve the Church ". 2 Civil power
was always the support of Luther's church and thus,

1 Sammtliche Wcrke, 6, 280; 43, 63, 279, 316; 9, 336; 6, IO6.
» Walch, I, 2444.

90 1>R. MAR TIN L UTHER.

as the Protestant historian, Karl Hagen, remarks,
" Protestant theology was moulded into a court-
theology, which throws itself into the dust before
the powerful of the earth and covers their acts of
violence with a mantle of hypocritical Christian
chanty."

XVIII.

Up to this time, despite the united efforts of pope
and emperor, the Ecumenical Council, to which
Luther had been always appealing, could not be
convened ; but now, when the question was se
riously agitated, the Protestants raised objections
against it and finally declined to attend it.

Paul III. sent his legate, Vergerius, to Germany,
to announce the opening of this council in Mantua.
Passing through Wittenberg, Vergerius desired to
see Luther, and therefore invited him to dinner.
Kostlin (II, 373) tells us how neatly Luther prepared
himself for the interview : "He put on his best
clothes and a gold chain around his neck, and when
his barber, who had to shave him and fix his hair
carefully, wondered at this extraordinary prepara
tion, Luther told him that he was to meet the legate
of the pope, before whom he had to appear young so
that he may think : ' Ah ! Luther is still vigorous
and can cause much trouble '. But the barber
thought that it would only rouse the anger of the
Romans, to which Luther replied : " This I intend
for having angered me and my disciples ; thus foxes
and serpents have to be treated '. The barber then
piously wished that the Lord might be with him
and he might succeed in converting the Ro
man gentlemen. Luther answered: " I shall
not do that, but it might happen that I should

92 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

rebuke them earnestly and then let them go. w
When he was seated with Pomeranus in the
carriage which was to take them to Vergerius,
Luther laughingly exclaimed: "There drive the
German Pope and Cardinal Pomeranus, the tools of
God. " In his conference with the papal legate he
said : " Illuminated by the Holy Ghost, we are
assured of all points and have no need of a council ;
but I shall go to the council, and may I lose my
head, if I do not defend my doctrine against the
whole world, Whatever proceeds from my mouth,
is not my wrath but the wrath of God. " 1 To inspire
his followers with a wholesome respect for the coming
council, the apostate taught them : "The papal Church
is Satan's school, which publicly inculcates sin and
forbids justice."8

In opposition to the Ecumenical Council the re
formers intended to convene a national Protestant
council. For this purpose Luther composed the
"Articles of Schmalkald," which presented a strik
ing contrast to the Augsburg Confession, and in
which he no longer attacked the "abuses and scan
dals" in the Church, but the old, Catholic doctrines
of the Mass, Purgatory, the Papacy, etc.

Under the powerful protection of the Protestant
princes and an army, he expected to gather his dis
ciples into a council of his own; but violent suffer
ings from calculus hindered him from convening this
mock council. Even on his sick-bed, when in seem
ing danger of death, he continued faithfully to revile
the papacy and its friends. " I would wish to live, "

i Walch, 16, 2296.

Werk*> 31, 392 et seq.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 93

he said, " till Pentecost that I might stigmatize in
open print the Roman beast, the Pope, and his king
dom, which I will certainly do if God keep me alive;
and no devil shall prevent me from doing so. " His
pain became so intense that he exclaimed: "I wish
there were a Turk here to kill me." " I would be
ready to die, if only the devil's legate were not in
Schmalkald and would not cry out to the world
that I died for fear and trembling. "-1

He had scarcely recovered, when he left Schmal
kald with the parting words: "May God fill you with
hatred for the Pope. "2 He talked himself into such
unreasonable rage against the papacy, that he could
not mention the Pope's name without adding that of
the devil.

1 Keil, Luther* s Lebensumstdnde, Leipzig 1764. See 3, 92 — 105.

a Menzel, Geschichte der Dcutschen, Breslau 1854. Vide I, 283 — 284.

XIX.

In the Diet of Frankfurt the Protestants refused
to grant toleration to Catholic worship, " because
in one and the same country or town unity of relig
ious service must be preserved ; " l they, however,
demanded that Catholics should give " free entrance "
to the "Gospel." "If I were the Landgrave of
Hesse," Luther wrote, "I would venture either to
punish or to kill them (the Catholics), because they
would not grant peace for a just cause ; but as a
preacher it becomes me not to give such advice, nor
to do it." He called Philip of Hesse "a miracle of
God and a hero."** But if Charles V. were to war
against Protestants, he should be resisted like a
Turk because he might then be regarded as a " mer
cenary in papal service."3

But who was this "miracle of God," this "hero"
of the new Church ? Philip, Landgrave of Hesse,
was one of the most violent, immoral, superstitious
and fraudulent princes that ever lived. He had been
married to Christina, daughter of Duke George of
Saxony, for sixteen years and was the father of eight
children ; but not even for three years, as he con
fessed himself, was he faithful to his wife. He lived
in open adultery and public debauchery And now,
with Luther's approbation, he was to add another to

i Seckendorf III, 202.

t Sctmmtliche Werke, 62, 86.

» De Wette 5, 10.

94

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 95

his long list of crimes, — a crime which according to
the laws of the empire was punishable with death, —
the crime of bigamy.

He wished to take for his second wife Margaret
von der Saale, maid of honor to his sister Elizabeth,
and was trying to legalize the marriage by obtain
ing the written consent of the reformers. With this
purpose, he sent a document to the great Witten
berg theologians, in which he declared it his inten
tion to marry Margaret in order to free himself from
the " snares of the devil." Explaining the Bible
according to Luther's principle, he asserted that the
Scripture does not forbid us to have two wives.
Moreover, he added, Luther and Melanchthon had
advised the king of England not to divorce his first
wife, but to take a second; he demanded the same
privilege, " that he might live and die cheerfully and
pursue the Protestant quarrels in a more free and
Christianlike manner." Should they refuse this trif
ling favor, he threatened that he would go over to
the emperor. 1

This request of the Landgrave caused Luther and
Melanchthon a Teat deal of trouble and perplexity.
In their answer, dated December loth, 1539, they
began by expressing joy at the Landgrave's recov
ery from a nameless disease, "for the poor, wretched
Church of Christ is small and abandoned, and truly
needs pious lords and sovereigns." In regard to the
matrimonial affair, — a distinction should be made
between a common law and a dispensation in a case
of necessity. They could not make a law permit
ting everybody to take more than one wife ; but in

* Corp. Reform., 3, 851.

90 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

his case it may be done, yet privately so as to avoid
scandal and talk. What Moses had allowed in re
gard to marriage, is not forbidden in the Gospel.
" Therefore your highness has not only our appro
bation in this case of necessity, but also our reflec
tions upon it."1

The marriage ceremony was performed by Denis
Melander, Philip's court preacher, who had himself
taken three wives according to the * Gospel.' It
was at Rothenburg on the Fulda, on March 4th,
1540, andMelanchthon, Bucer and other theologians
honored the feast with their presence. The mar
riage contract, drawn up by Balthasar Reid, a
Lutheran preacher, states that Philip had taken
Margaret " to provide for the welfare of his body
and soul, and to bring greater glory to God." 2 On
the following day, the Landgrave wrote to Luther
" with a cheerful conscience," thanking him for his
counsel. " I notice/' Luther replied, on April I2th,
" that your highness is in glee about the advice
given, which we like to be kept secret ; otherwise
the rough peasants will follow your example, al
leging still more grievous causes. This would create
a great deal of trouble." On May 24th, Luther
'wrote again : " I have received your present, one
fudder of Rhine wine, for which your highness will
accept my thanks." 3

The delicate affair of Philip's marriage soon became
known among the people. Luther insisted that it
should be publicly denied. "A secret 'yes'," he ex-

i De Wette 6, 239-244.

a Rommel. Philip, Landgraf von ffessen. Giessen, 1830.

8 Leuz, Correspondence of Philip with Bucer, 361-363.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 97

plained, "cannot become a public 'yes', or else
and ' secret 5< public ' would mean the same thing.
Therefore the secret 'yes' must remain a public 'noY'1
He stated this admirable principle still more plainly
at Eisenach in July, when he informed his hearers
that it was allowable for the sake of the Christian
church to tell a good strong lie. 2 " Luther declared,"
says Alzog, " that the divulgence of the secret ad
mitted of no defense and that he would therefore
either deny outright having authorized the second
marriage at all — (a course which he might possibly
take, since the authorization was granted for a secret
marriage only, which therefore became null and void
by being made public ;) — or, should this course fail
him, he would come out openly, confess that he had
blundered and played the fool, and crave pardon for
his fault."

Julius von Pflug had been canonically elected
bishop of Naumburg-Zeitz ; but the Elector, John
Frederic, arbitrarily appointed Nicholas Amsdorf for
that see. Luther, assisted by three other preachers,
performed a mock consecration. Shortly afterwards
he seemed to feel the coarseness of this farcical
demonstration, for he wrote on March 26th, 1542:
"It was a bold crime, full of hatred, envy and in
dignation." 3

Henry, Duke of Brunswick, had remained faithful
to his mother Church and had .openly condemned
Luther's approval of the Landgrave's bigamy ; he
therefore became the object oflthe Reformer's ^insult

1 De Wette— Seidman, 6, 263.

2 See Lenz 372-377.

3 DeWette, 5. 451.

98 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

and invective. Luther directed against him a most
infamous libel, entitled ''Against the Buffoon," which
raised doubts in the minds of many as to whether
the writer had not lost his wits. "The duke has
daily swallowed devils, and he is chained in hell with
the chains of divine judgement." — Always "devils"
and "hell" and "brimstone"; hardly a sentence
without these odious words. — He exhorted the
preachers to denounce Henry from the pulpits and
to tell the people that " not only Henry has been
damned by divine judgement, but also pope, card
inals, bishops, priests and monks." l Yet, when
revising this pamphlet, he wrote to Melanchthon that
he found he had been too moderate in it. 2

Henry tried to subjugate those rebellious subjects
in Brunswick who had joined the League of Schmal-
kald. The Protestant princes, however, resolved to
assist the rebels. They invaded Henry's states, de
vastating and plundering the Catholic churches,
stealing the treasures of the monasteries and, in a
word, introducing the light of the Wittenberg
Gospel. Henry was forced to flee from his duchy
and seek refuge in Bavaria. Luther called this
victory of the Evangelicals a "miracle of God," and
declared blasphemously that God had been in the
affair3 while his friend Melanchthon attributed it to
the protection of the angels. 4

In a pamphlet, entitled "Of Shem Hamphoras",
Luther excited the people to open war against the

1 Sammtliche Werke, 26, 1-75.

2 De Wette, 5, 342.

8 SUmmtliche Werkf, 5, 490-496.
« Corp. Reform., 4, 879.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER. 99

Jews, whom he had so often and so violently attack
ed in his earlier writings. In this, his last savage
libel against the sons of Israel, he demanded their
expulsion and the abolition of their worship, and
called them a set of " devils doomed to hell." l

At the Diet at Worms (1545) the Protestants
again declared that they would take no part in the
Ecumenical Council of Trent, and gave expression
to their religious feelings in language which was so
coarse and violent that it aroused the anger of
Charles V. But the emperor was still more pro
voked at the latest publication which Luther had
scattered through Germany, "the last great test
imony against the papacy ", as Koestlin calls it. 2
This shameless work was preceded by an ob
scene frontispiece, the work of Luke Cranach, who
illustrated a. great many of Luther's writings. The
reformer seems to have rallied all his declining
strength in order to pour forth, in this last literary
effort, the fullness of his hatred and rage against
Rome. He entitled the book: " The Papacy an
Institution of the Devil".

With the consent of the Prince Elector he ap
pealed to a religious war for the destruction of the
papacy, or rather of the Catholic Church'. He styles
the popes "arch-rascals, murderers, traitors and
liars"; the pope and his followers could not be cor
rected by a council "because they neither believe
in God nor in life to come, but live and die like
cattle. The best thing the emperor and the States
can do is, to let the cursed set of Rome go to, the

1 Sammtliche Werke, 32, 275, et segu.

2 2, 588.

TOO DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

{\

devil; a council can effect nothing". He then gives

a very ingenious and original plan for abolishing
the papacy: "Now then seize upon it, ye emperors,
kings, princes and lords. May God withhold his
blessing from lazy hands. First take from the pope
Rome, Romandiola, Urbino, Bologna and all that
he possesses; for whatever he possesses he has ob
tained by lies, frauds, nay even blasphemies and
idolatries, robbed from the empire. Therefore hang
up the pope, the cardinals and all the papal rabble;
tear out their blaspheming tongues, and fix them
on a gibbet as they clap their seals on their bulls.
Then they may hold a council, or as many as they
like, on the gallows or. in hell among all the devils".1
Willibald Pirkheimer, a contemporary of Luther's,
was so disgusted at this furious language, that he
(Wrote: "Luther must be completely insane or else
possessed by an evil spirit ". And yet Luther him
self called it a "pious and useful" book, which
pleased the Elector of Saxony so much that he sent
for twenty florins' worth of copies. 2 The reformer
desired to write more against the pope, but his in
tense sufferings hindered him from doing so; he had
to content himself, therefore, with the pious wish
that pope and cardinals might be afflicted with his
disease. 3

1 SUmmtlichc Werke, 26, 108-228.

2 Seckenclorf, III, 556.

3 De Wette, 5, 443.

XX.

LUTHER'S last hours were imbittered by " unspeak
able cares and tortures " about the desperate con
dition of his country and the religious anarchy
which his doctrine had caused among his country
men. He noticed with horror the growing im
morality and the evil spirit of insubordination to
authority. "We live in Sodoma and Babylon", he
wrote to Prince George of Anhalt; " everything is
daily growing worse ". l

In the district of Wittenberg, where the reformer
had labored so ardently, there was, according to
his own statement, " but one peasant who urged his
domestics to the Word of God and the Catechism;
all others were going to the devil ". " Nobles, citi
zens and peasants trample religion under their feet,
and drive away their preachers by starvation ". 2
"They wish to be damned", he wrote on January
8th, 1544; "may it be done as they wish ". 3 But
in Wittenberg itself corruption and depravity were
making large advances under the " light of the
Gospel " and its hero. Luther was so disgusted
with the Wittenbergers' wantonness and libertinism,
that he left the city and instructed his Catharine to
sell out and follow him, as they soon " will have the

1 De Wette, 5, 722.

2 Lauterbactfs Tagebuch 113, 114, 135.
8 De Wette 5, 773.

IO1

102 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

devils dance in Wittenberg". "Away from this
Sodom ! I would rather go about the world as a
stranger and eat the bread of a beggar than pass
the few remaining miserable days of my life in
trouble and as a martyr in Wittenberg ". l He re
turned, however, at the request of the Elector; but
he soon threatened to leave again.

As his last moments approached, his remorse of
conscience increased. It tormented him cruelly day
and night. But he regarded his doubts and anxie
ties as temptations of Satan, and even repelled the
objections of reason by calling reason the devil's
bride. "I have almost lost Christ," he said, "and
am tossed about in billows and storms of despair
and blasphemy against God." 2 What wonder then
that he could not utter a prayer without a curse !
On January i/th, 1546, about a month before his
death, ne wrote to a friend : "I am old, decrepit, in-

tlent, fatigued, tremulous and blind of an eye ; I
ped for repose in my old age, but I have nothing
but suffering." 3 /

Though broken in health and depressed in mind,
Luther consented to undertake a journey to Eis-
leben in order to settle a quarrel between the two
counts of Mansfield. While passing through the
city of Halle" he saw some monks in their habits.
This excited his anger to such a degree, that he
demanded of the city authorities the expulsion of
the " lousy, shabby monks."4 ^n another place the

1 De Wette, 5, 453.

2 De Wette, 3, 189.
<• De Wette, 5, 778,

4 Sammtliche Wcrke, 1 6, 126.

DA. MAR1NT LUTHER. 103

Jews provoked his passion so much, that he wished
for their destruction "for the glory of God". On
February 1st, 1546, he wrote to Catherine :' "When
I shall have finished my principal business, I shall
devote my chief energies to the expulsion of the
Jews. Count Albert hates them heartily and has
declared them outlaws ; but so far no one has done
them harm. Should it be God's will, I shaH mount
the pulpit and with Count Albert declare them
beyond the pale of the law."1

In Eisleben he was munificently entertained, and
he emptied many a glass to the downfall of the
papacy. When he saw the wine flowing on the floor
in the Castle of the Counts, he said : "There soon
will the grass grow.";! On February i/th, 1546, he
seized a piece of chalk and wrote upon the wall :
"Pestis eramy vivus; moriens, ero mors tua, papa!"
— ("Living, O Pope, I was thy pest ; dying, I shall
be thy death !")2 '' He died on the night of Febru
ary l8th.

''Thus suddenly," Alzog says, "and prematurely
was Luther stricken down, in the town where he had
been born and baptized, after he had passed his life
and exerted his powerful influence in setting people
against people, sundering social bonds and inflicting
a severe, though not, as he fancied, a fatal wound
upon the Church of his fathers." v Luther was hated
and execrated by Catholics during his life and after
his death ; but by his followers his memory has been
cherished in speech and poem ; and he even now
enjoys among many Protestants the honor and de-

» De Wette, 5, 784—787.
» Ratrenherger, 138.

104 DR. MARTIN LUTHER.

votion which Catholics pay to canonized saints.
But for his poor Catharine and children nobody
seemed to care. They lived and died in poverty and
misery after seeking vainly for support from the
Protestant princes and the 'Reformer's other
admirers.

APPENDIX.

§ i.

LUTHER'S PUBLIC CHARACTER,

AS DESCRIBED BY REV. DR. ALZOG IN HIS UNIVERSAL CHURCH
HISTORY. *

Luther closed his career of a Reformer as he had opened it,
breathing hostility against the Pope, and uttering driveling
contradiction like the following : ' ' The Pope is the most
holy and the most devilish of fathers. " His teachings, like
his life, are full of inconsistences. Shortly before his death,
he declared that the Scriptures contained mysteries and un
fathomable depths, in the prensence of which one must humbly
bow his head.

But however numerous and glaring may have been the in
consistencies of Luther's life and teachings, he was always at
one with himself in insolent pride and self-sufficiency, and in
the testament containing his last will showed his usual im
patience and contempt of all the accepted forms of human
right and law.

^ Judjing Luther by the wonderful activity and tumultuous
excitement of his life, he is one of the most remarkable men

i Manual of Universal Church History by the Rev. Dr. John Alzog.—
Translated from the German by Rev. Dr. Pabisch and Rev. T. Byrne.

I05

106 APPENDIX.

the world has ever produced ; but regarding him in his char
acter as a reformer of the Church, he made the most disastrous
failure of any person who ever attempted that difficult task,
for the reason that he was totally destitute of the necessary
virtues of charity and humility. Arrogantly rejecting the
authority of the Church, he soon learned that he had acted
precipitately and unwisely, and was forced to shelter himself
behind it to successfully defend himself against his adversaries.
That he possessed courage is undeniable ; but it is equally
true that his courage frequently degenerated into foolish bra
vado. His activity was ceaseless and untiring, and his elo
quence popular and captivating, his .mind quick, his imagi
nation brilliant, his . character unselfish, and his temper
profoundly religious. This overmastering religious sentiment,
so characteristic of his system, contrasts strangely with the
habitual blasphemy and sarcasm of his language. Hence,
Erasmus said that he was a compound of two personalities.
"At times," says the scholar of Rotterdam, "he writes like an
apostle and again he talks like a fool. " His jests are so coarse,
and his thrusts so reckless, that he seems utterly forgetful of
the figure he is cutting, or the spectacle he is presenting to
the world. When I pray (i. <?., say Our Father), said
Luther, on one occasion, I can't help cursing the whole time.
While declaiming against the use of arms in vindicating the
rights of religion, he put forth principles and employed Ian-
guage that might have done honor to a Jacobin of the eight
eenth century. Apparently frank and honest in his advocacy
of an unlimited freedom in interpreting the Holy Scriptures,
he refused to his adversaries the right which he vauntingly
arrogated to himself; and while proclaiming the glorious pre.
rogatives of free inquiry, conducted himself toward his most
devoted adherents, and most intimate friends, Melanchthon
among the rest, as a tyrant and a despot. So imperious was
he in the assertion of his magisterial authority, and so exact
ing in its exercise, that Melanchthon confesses: that, in his own

APPENDIX. 107'

case, it amounted to a degrading slavery. (Tuli servitutem
paene deferment). When it is further borne in mind that
Luther was both a glutton and a drunkard, having so little
regard for ordinary proprieties that he brutally wrote to his
wife, in a letter dated July 2, 1540: "I am feeding like a
Bohemian and swilling like a German, thanks be to God/,
that in speaking of marriage, the most sacred of social insti
tutions, he gave utterance to thoughts so indecent in language,
so coarse and revolting, that one seeks in vain to find an apo
logy for him in the lax morals of that lax age ; and that he
employed this language not alone at table but in his published
writings, and public addresses, one feels bound, apart from
any consideration of the perversity of his principles or the
falsity of his teachings, to say that he is hardly such a person
as would be singled out as having received a vocation to
inaugurate and carry out a moral reform. It has always been
characteristic of those who have had any success in carrying
out reforms in the Church that they began their work by first
reforming themselves, and it is har/ily necessary to remark
that this was not Luther's method. To discover the notes of
a reformer in the ungovernable transports, the riotous pro
ceedings, the angry conflicts, and the intemperate controver
sies which made up the life of Luther, presupposes a partiality
amounting to blindness.

" It must be evident," says Erasmus, " to the most feeble
intellect, that one who raised so great storm in the v.'orld, who
always found pleasure in using language either indecent or
caustic, could not have been called of God. His arrogance,
to which no parallel can be found, was scarcely distinguishable
from madness ; and his buffoonery was such that it could not
be supposed possible in one doing the work of God."

His character is accurately portrayed in the following brief
ketch from the pen of Pallavicini. "The products of his
prolific genius," says the distinguished historian of the Council
of Trent, "were extravagant and abnormal, rather than choice

108 APPENDIX.

and correct, resembling more some gigantic offspring of im
mature birth, than the shapely babe brought forth after the
lapse of nature's appointed time. His intellect was vigorous
and robust ; but its strength was expended in pulling down,
not in building up. Gifted with a tenacious memory, he had
acquired a vast deal of erudition, which he poured forth, as
the occasion demanded, in impetuous torrents resembling a
thunder-storm in its angry and destructive fury, rather than
the refreshing rains of summer, that brighten and gladden the
face of nature. He was an eloquent speaker and writer ; but
his eloquence was more like the whirl-wind, blinding the
eyes with a cloud of dust, than the placid flow of a peaceful
fountain, delighting them with light and color. His
language was such that, throughout the whole of his works,
not a single sentence can be found wholly free from a cer
tain coarseness and vulgarity. Courageous to temerity in
prosperous, he was cowardly to abjectness in adverse fortune.
Professing his readiness to remain silent if his adversaries
would do the same, he clearly showed that he was
actuated, not by a motive of zeal for God's glory, but
by feelings of jealousy and self-love. Princes were among
his followers ; but they became such not from any desire of
forwarding his cause, but in the hope of enriching themselves
with the property of the Church. The harm he did to the
Church, was indeed great ; but while bringing incomparable
disaster upon others, brought no advantage to himself. His
name will be memorable in history for all time, but as a name
of infamy and dishonor. Now that the rotten branches have
been lopped from the vine of the Church, the sound and living
ones will thrive and flourish all the better for their absence. "

APPENDIX. 109

§ ».

After reading the life of Martin Luther, a question natur
ally presents itself to the mind of the reader : how was it pos
sible that a made-over religion, fixed up by such a man,
should have been adopted by so many? In reply to this
question, we append some of the causes which Cardinal Her-
genrother l brings forward to account for the spread of Pro
testantism :

"Like the heresies that were before it, Protestantism had its
rise in the pride and in the passions of its founders. The
reasons of its spreading so widely are to be found in the poli
tical, religious and literary conditions of the time and especi
ally in local and personal circumstances. Everything seemed
to favor the new teaching ; in particular :

"I. The civil governments of the day had been gradually
estranging themselves from the Church ;

"2. A dislike of Rome, long and in many ways nourished,
had been greatly strengthened by loud cries of abuse ;

"3. The inclination of many chronic malcontents to any
innovation ;

"4. Seductive ideas of independence of thought; of soul
liberty ; of a universal priesthood, etc.

' '5. The passions which the Reformers kindled and in
flamed, viz : intellectual vanity, self-sufficient without the
Church's help to derive the truth from Scripture ; avarice,
gloating itself with the goods and treasures of Church and
convent ;

"6. Protestantism made religion easy : no fasting, no con
fession of sins, etc. ;

"7. Remnants of former heresies ;

"8. The scientific contest between the humanists and the
scholastics ;

1 Handbuch der allgemeinen Kirchengeschichte. Freiburg in Bade*
1877. — See II, 378—380.

IIO APPENDIX.

"9. Carelessness of the episcopacy and partial perversity
of the clergy ;

"10. Personal influence of the Reformers, who with their
popular eloquence perfectly understood how to abuse the
weakness of the people ;

"i i. The jealousy of France toward the mighty house of
Habsburg ;

"i 2. Several mistakes of representatives of the old Church
in opposing the new heresy ;

"13. Flattering institutions of the new teaching: the
giving of the chalice to the laity ; the use of the vernacular
at divine service ;

"14. Individual interpreation of the Bible ;

"15. The alluring doctrines of justification by faith alone ;
of the enslavement of the human will ; of the assurance of
salvation ; of invalidity of conventual vows ; of the harmful-
ness of celibacy and good works ;

"16. And more than all, the violence of princes and
cities, who after the expulsion of Catholic priests forced the
people to hear the "New Gospel"; thus in many places the
people were torn away from the old Church by brutal force.
With insidious fraud Catholic rites were for a long time pre
served, and the old forms of religion kept intact so that the
blinded people might not be aware of any essential change in
their faith ;

"17. Most of the apostles of Protestantism were base hy
pocrites who according to circumstances preached the Catholic
or the Protestant doctrine ;

"18. In the early Christian centuries faith was propagated
by the martyrdom of heroes in the true Church of God, with
whom Protestant so-called martyrs can bear no comparison ;
Protestantism was propagated by civil power, and at the same
time enslaved and made desolate."

APPENDIX. 1 1 1

§ 3-

BIBLE TRANSLATIONS INTO THE VERNACULAR
BEFORE LUTHER'S VERSION. >

" In the first place, there is a copy yet extant of a printed
version so old as to have no date ; for the first printed books
had neither a date nor name of place. In the second place,
a Catholic version was printed by Fust in 1472, nearly sixty
years before the completion of Luther's version. Another had
appeared as early as 1467 ; a fourth was published in 1472 ;
and a fifth in 1473. At Nuremberg there was a version pub
lished in 1477, and republished three times more before Luther's
appeared. There appeared at Augsburg another in the same
year, which went through eight editions before that of Luther.
At Nuremberg one was published by Koburg in 1483 and in
1488 ; and at Augsburg one appeared in 1518, which was re-
published in 1 524, about the same time that Luther was going
on with his ; and down to the present time, the editions of
this version have been almost countless.

" In Spain a version appeared in 1478, before Luther was
thought of, and almost before he was born. In Italy, the
country most peculiarly under the sway of Papal dominion,
the Scriptures were translated into Italian bv Malermi at
Venice in 1471; and this version was republished seventeen
times before the conclusion of that century, and twenty-three
years before that of Luther's appeared. A second version of
parts of Scripture was published in 1472 ; a third at Rome in
1471; a fourth by Bruccioli at Venice in 1 532; and a corrected
edition by Marmochini in 1538, two years after Luther had
completed his. And everyone of these came out, not only
with the approbation of the ordinary authorities, but with that

1 Lectures on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic
Church, by Cardinal Wiseman, vol. I, p. 55 seq.

112 APPENDIX.

of the Inquisition, which approved of their being published,
distributed and promulgated.

"In France a translation was published in 1478; another
by Menand in 1484; another by Guiars de Moulins in 1487,
which may rather be called a History of the Bible ; and
finally, another by Jacques le Fevre in 1512, often re
printed.

' ' In the Belgian language, a version was published at
Cologne in 1475, which, before 1488, had been republished
three times. A second appeared in 1518.

"There was also a Bohemian translation, published in
1488, thrice reprinted before Luther's ; not to speak of the
Polish and Oriental versions. In our own country it is well-
known, that there were versions long before that of Tyndal or
of Wickliffe. Sir Thomas More has observed that ' the hole
Byble was, long before his ( Wickliffe's) dayes, by vertuous and
wel learned men, translated into the English tong, and by
good and godly people, with devotion and soberness, wel and
reverently red. ' "

526026

BR 325 .57 1883

SMC

Stang, Wm. (Wi Hiam),

1854-1907.
The li fe of Mart in

Luther /
AYA-4364 (mcab)